Orbit takes North novel set after the world has burned

Orbit UK has acquired the "spellbinding" new novel from the multi-award winning Claire North, titled Notes from the Burning Age.

Meg Davis at the Ki Agency sold world rights to Orbit UK publisher Anna Jackson, who will publish alongside sister imprint Orbit US in a co-ordinated global release this July.

The book is described by the Little, Brown imprint as "a spellbinding speculative fiction novel set in a future utopian society that is thrilling, moving and thought-provoking in equal measure". 

Claire North is a pseudonym for the author Catherine Webb. Her first book under the Claire North name, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (Orbit UK), is currently being adapted as movie by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Partners and will be directed by “Maze Runner” director Wes Ball.  

North has since published several critically acclaimed novels and won the World Fantasy Award and the John W Campbell Award, and has been shortlisted for various other prize including the Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award. Her novels have been sold in translation in more than 20 territories.  

Jackson said: “Claire continues to amaze me with the scope of her imagination, and Notes from the Burning Age really wowed me with its sheer brilliance and originality. Set in an age after the world has burned, it’s a visionary tale that asks whether humankind can change the paths we seem fated to follow. Claire has already achieved so much in her writing career to date, and this book is going to take her to new heights.”