Orion signs Winnie M Li in 48-hour pre-empt

Orion Fiction has pre-empted Winnie M Li's new novel Complicit, exploring questions raised by the #MeToo movement and the dark side of Hollywood, for a six-figure sum within 48 hours of receiving the manuscript. 

Publishing director Francesca Pathak acquired world rights in a two-book deal from Robert Caskie.

The book follows Li's debut novel, Dark Chapter (Legend Press), inspired by an assault the author suffered in 2008. Dark Chapter won the Guardian’s Not the Booker Prize as well as being sold in 12 territories around the world.

Complicit is billed as a timely reading group novel about Hollywood and power – who wields it and how that affects what we believe. Li herself is a former film producer. 

The story focuses on Sarah Lai, a film lecturer at a New York college. The synopsis reads: "When she is approached by a top journalist who wants to interview her about a movie producer she worked with when she was in her 20s, she knows that now is the time to tell her story. But as she looks back to her time as an aspiring young producer, she is forced to confront what she did and didn’t do, what she could and couldn’t control, and ultimately how complicit she was in what was going on around her."

With plans to publish in hardback in April 2022, Pathak said Li's new novel was akin to Anatomy of a Scandal meets Disclaimer with a dash of Daisy Jones and the Six. "I haven’t read anything like this in such a long time," she said. "Winnie’s experience in the film industry has given this novel such an authentic edge about the dark side of Hollywood and that, combined with pitch perfect suspenseful writing means that there is no doubt Complicit is going to be huge."

Li said: "It means so much to me that Orion will be bringing Complicit to readers next year, thanks in no small part to the dedication of my agent Robert Caskie. After Dark Chapter, I wanted to write a novel that captures the fun and excitement of the film industry alongside the cruel uncertainties of working in that world as a young woman. And as a survivor of sexual assault myself, it was important to do justice to the choices we as women sometimes make to protect ourselves and our careers — and to celebrate our ability to tell our own stories. I hope Complicit provides an entertaining, but realistic answer to questions that may have been raised in the wake of #MeToo."