'Moving' new Susan Faludi title to William Collins

William Collins is to publish In the Darkroom, the new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Susan Faludi, this summer.

Arabella Pike at William Collins bought world English rights excluding North America from David Miller at Rogers, Coleridge & White, acting for Melanie Jackson who has already placed the the book in Holland and France through RCW’s Laurence Laluyaux. 

In the Darkroom tells of the search for the meaning of identity in the modern world and Faludi’s own haunted family saga, a story that takes her across historical, political, and religious borders. 

Her account of what happened after her long-estranged father contacted her is both "urgent and personal". As she struggles to come to grips with her father’s story, Faludi explores amongst other memories her father's many previous incarnations: American Dad, Alpine Mountaineer, Swashbuckling Adventurer in the Amazon Outback, Jewish Fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. When Faludi travelled to Hungary to be reunited  with her father, she found herself in a labyrinth of dark histories and dangerous politics, in a country hell bent on repressing its past and constructing a fanciful, virulent nation. The search for identity, as her book shows, can be "as treacherous for nations as for individuals", the publisher said.

Pike said: "This incomparable book lodged itself firmly in my head and my heart instantly. On one level, it is a simple tale of a father and daughter but Faludi’s genius transforms her personal story into a profound, sometimes hilarious, often moving meditation on history, power, gender politics, religious intolerance, persecution, family breakdown. Its scope is vast, its portrait of Budapest past and present cinematic, its importance profound. I am hugely excited about it and can’t wait for it to hit the bookshops in July."

William Collins will publish In the Darkroom alongside Sara Bershtel at Metropolitan in the USA this summer.