Picador signs 'haunting and powerful' new Donoghue novel

Picador has signed a “powerful and haunting” new novel from Emma Donoghue, bestselling author of The Pull of the Stars and Room.

Ravi Mirchandani, editor in chief, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, for Haven from Caroline Davidson at Caroline Davidson Literary Agency. Picador will publish Haven in August 2022, simultaneously with Little, Brown in the US and HarperCollins in Canada.

The synopsis states: “In a time of plague and terror, three men vow to leave the world behind them. They set sail in a small boat, in search of a lonely rock in the ocean. What they find is the extraordinary island now known as Skellig Michael. Emma Donoghue’s deeply researched novel has her trademark psychological intensity, but this story is like nothing she has ever written before.”

Donoghue's 2010 novel Room (Picador) was a finalist for the Man Booker, Commonwealth, and Orange Prizes. Her screen adaptation, directed by Lenny Abrahamson, was nominated for four Academy Awards. Last year's The Pull of the Stars (Picador) won widespread critical acclaim.

Mirchandani commented: “My Picador colleagues and I are delighted to be publishing Emma Donoghue's new novel, a story as strikingly and excitingly different from The Pull of the Stars, as that novel was from its predecessors. Haven takes the reader into the distant past and to the edges of the then known world, yet its deeply human concerns are as relevant to ours today as anything Emma has ever written. I very much look forward to being able to discuss this moving and thought-provoking novel with many more readers as we approach publication.”