Picador signs Tóibín's 'masterful' new novel

Picador has signed Colm Tóibín’s "masterful" new novel, Long Island. Publisher Mary Mount acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada and Australasia, and e-book, audio and serial rights from Peter Straus at RCW. Scribner will publish in the US. The novel will be published in May 2024.

Long Island reunites readers with Eilis Lacey, 20 years after Brooklyn. It is the 1970s and Lacey is living with her husband Tony Fiorello and their children in Long Island. But "a shocking piece of news at the opening of the novel propels Eilis back to Ireland, to a world she thought she had long left behind and to ways of living, and loving, she thought she had lost."

Mount commented: "Colm Tóibín is one of the world’s finest writers and Brooklyn is a novel that was loved by readers around the world. It is overwhelming to be reunited with the characters of that novel once again and to see them anew. This is a novel of profound emotional resonance and enormous wit, both qualities having long been hallmarks of Tóibín’s writing."

Tóibín has won the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Costa Prize, David Cohen Award, the IMPAC award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. This will mark his 12th book with Picador.