Picador picks up 'riveting and razor-sharp' Hoke novel

Picador has signed a “riveting and razor-sharp novel from Henry Hoke, inspired by a lion living in the Hollywood Hills.

Commissioning editor Gillian Fitzgerald-Kelly acquired world English language rights, excluding North America, for Open Throat from Szilvia Molnar at Sterling Lord Literistic, on behalf of primary agent Jim Rutman. Jackson Howard at Farrar, Straus & Giroux will publish in the US. Picador will publish Open Throat in early 2023.

Fitzgerald-Kelly said: “Everything about Henry’s magnificent novel thrilled me from the moment I started reading. It is vivid, acerbic, surprising; I read it in one sitting and felt determined to bring Henry and his creation to Picador. Luckily, my colleagues also fell for it from the first sentence. Henry is a joy and his work will be an exciting addition to the list.”

The synopsis states: “A stinging, elegiac snapshot of contemporary Los Angeles, Open Throat is told from the perspective of a queer, dangerously hungry mountain lion, isolated and struggling to survive in a drought-devastated Griffith Park. As it protects the precarious welfare of a nearby homeless encampment from its thicket, it confronts a string of temptations and threats, taking us on a tour that spans the city’s cruel inequality to the real cost of climate grief, all the while grappling with the complexities of its own gender identity and memories of a vicious, absent father. Razor-sharp, Open Throat explores a strange, seductive and elusive odyssey, full of wonder and menace, for a creature who knows it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even as salvation appears within reach, there’s no way of escaping our primal pressures as the inevitable reckoning rushes in like wildfire, until finally, our narrator must ask themselves: does it want to eat a human, or become one?”

Hoke is the author of four books including memoir Sticker (Bloomsbury Object Lessons) and his work has appeared in Electric Literature, Triangle House, the Offing and the Catapult anthology Tiny Crimes. He teaches at the University of Virginia Young Writers Workshop. 

He said: “I’m elated that Gillian and Picador will be bringing this wild animal to British readers. A dream match for me and my ferocious, personal Los Angeles novel.”