Scribe UK signs trio of 'key' deals

Scribe UK has acquired three new titles from its existing authors Marina Benjamin, Jeremy Gavron and Tommy Wieringa.

Benjamin’s latest book The Middlepause (Scribe) "disassembled middle age in our times", and was hailed as "lucid and sophisticated … A restrained but wonderful guide to the convulsive changes of 50 and over" by the Guardian. Her new work of nonfiction Insomnia is a similarly "astute, elegant and engaging examination"of insomnia, a blight on many in middle age and beyond, and on Benjamin herself, Scribe said.

Benjamin will explore insomnia’s position in culture and society, and its influence on the arts and sciences, and what the latest neuroscience reveals about the condition. Scribe editor-at-large Philip Gwyn Jones acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Rebecca Carter of Janklow & Nesbit, who retains control of audio and US rights. Scribe will publish in flapped paperback in the autumn of 2018.

Gavron is the author of a memoir about his search for his mother A Woman on the Edge of the Time (Scribe) and has now written an "equally searching, moving and illuminating" novel about loss and absence, Felix Culpa, that is composed almost entirely of sentences and phrases taken from his hundred favourite books. Gwyn Jones acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Clare Alexander at Aitken Alexander, who retains control of translation, US and audio rights in the book. Scribe will publish in hardback in February 2018.

Wieringa is one of the Dutch language’s "greatest living exponents", and his fiction is steadily amassing for him a "stellar worldwide reputation", according to the publisher. Most recently, Scribe published his perfect novella A Beautiful Young Wife, the equal of anything of similar length by Ian McEwan. Wieringa’s new novella is an "equally taut" and "ethically unnerving" portrait of the aftermath of the death of an illegal migrant in the boot of a car on board a Mediterranean ferry, The Death of Murat Idrissi.

Scribe has acquired rights in The Death of Murat Idrissi and Wieringa’s next unpublished full-length novel, with the novella being published in hardback in August 2018. Sam Garrett, Wieringa’s long-time translator, will translate. Gwyn Jones acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Marijke Nagtegaal at De Bezige Bij of Amsterdam, who retains translation and US rights.