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Orenda pre-empts Madsen’s ‘staggering’ début Thirty Days of Darkness in two-book deal
Orenda Books has pre-empted Jenny Lund Madsen’s “staggering” début novel Thirty Days of Darkness in a two-book deal.
Publisher Karen Sullivan pre-empted world English language rights from Sophia Hersi Smith at the Copenhagen Literary Agency. The first book will be translated by Megan E Turney and published in hardback in May 2023.
“Thirty Days of Darkness is a brilliant début and Jenny Lund Madsen is a breath of fresh air on the crime novel scene,” said Hersi Smith. “We cannot wait for Orenda Books to introduce English-speaking readers to this darkly funny and deeply original Nordic Noir.”
Lund is a screenwriter and novelist whose début Thirty Days of Darkness won the Harald Mogensen Prize for Best Danish Crime Novel of the Year and was shortlisted for the Glass Key Award. It is currently in production for television.
The synopsis reads: “Copenhagen author Hannah is the darling of the literary community and her novels have achieved massive critical acclaim. But nobody actually reads them, and frustrated by writer’s block, Hannah has the feeling that she’s doing something wrong. When she expresses her contempt for genre fiction, Hannah is publicly challenged to write a crime novel in 30 days. Scared that she will lose face, she accepts, and her editor sends her to Húsafjöður – a quiet, tight-knit village in Iceland, filled with colourful local characters – for inspiration. But two days after her arrival, the body of a fisherman’s young son is pulled from the water… and what begins as a search for plot material quickly turns into a messy and dangerous investigation that threatens to uncover secrets that put everything at risk… including Hannah herself.”
Sullivan commented: “If ever there was a book destined for our list, this is it. Atmospheric, dramatic and full of nerve-jangling twists, Thirty Days of Darkness is also an outrageously funny literary satire with the convergence of (or battleground between) literary and crime fiction at its heart. Hannah is a masterful character – snobby, alcoholic, world-weary and selfish, yet strangely likeable – and her public spat with a bestselling crime writer is hilarious. The entire novel is clever, literary, thoughtful and beautiful but it is also, perhaps most importantly, an absolutely brilliant Nordic Noir thriller, full of darkness, brooding tension and unsettling turns, with an exceptionally plotted mystery. The conceits, the fact that Hannah travels to a tiny fishing village in Iceland to write her crime novel, the evocative, exceptional writing, all play directly into familiar territory for us and we are going to have so much fun publishing this ultimate meta thriller.”
Madsen added: “I’m extremely proud that Thirty Days of Darkness will now join the ranks of the brilliant crime novels and thrillers published by Orenda Books, and I couldn’t be more excited for publication day. I hope readers will enjoy my Danish-Icelandic crime story with a twist and that they fall for our unlikely heroine Hannah, the literary novelist-cum-investigator.”
