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The Borough Press pre-empts books by Gómez Urzaiz and Wayne
The Borough Press has acquired The Abandoners by Begoña Gómez Urzaiz, originally published in Spanish in 2022 by Destino, and The Winner by Teddy Wayne, described as a literary thriller in the vein of "The White Lotus" and Patricia Highsmith.
Commissioning editor Amy Perkins acquired UK and Commonwealth rights to The Abandoners, excluding Canada, from Maria Cardona at Aevitas. Rights have also gone to WW Norton in the US, Aufbau in Germany, Zahar/Companhia das Letras in Brazil and Karakter in Poland.
The Abandoners, the publisher says, “explores a subject that to an extent remains taboo in our society: women who abandon their children". “Using real life examples such as Muriel Spark and Ingrid Bergman along with those from pop culture and fiction, Spanish journalist Begoña paints a nuanced and transgressive approach to motherhood that we rarely see presented,” it goes on. The book has won praise from Jia Tolentino, Tessa Hadley and Claudia Durastanti.
Perkins said: ‘It’s not often as an editor that you encounter a difficult subject explored with such nuance and vigour as Begoña has managed in The Abandoners. Her ability to interrogate her own emotions with such a smart, subtle touch opens the door to us as readers to investigate our own prejudices. I could not feel more privileged to be bringing her stunning style to The Borough Press list.”
Gómez Urzaiz said: “Much of the material that feeds the book has to do with British and American figures, so I’m very curious as to how it will be received in translation."
Perkins also bought UK and Commonwealth rights excluding Canada from James Gill at United Agents to The Winner, in a pre-empt, for publication in conjunction with Millicent Bennett at HarperCollins US in summer 2024. Film rights have been sold to a “major studio” for feature-film, with an A-list actor attached and the author adapting for the screen.
The class-conscious thriller follows a young man teaching tennis for the summer at a WASP [White Anglo-Saxon Protestants] enclave of Massachusetts, the publisher says: “When he is offered money by one of the much older, but very attractive women on the estate to do more than improve her serve, he fails to see the downside of the arrangement – but after falling for a young woman who proves to be her daughter, things quickly escalate, leading to a violent murder and a man desperate to escape the blame at any cost.”
Wayne is the winner of a Whiting Writer’s Award and an NEA Writing Fellowship, among other honours. He’s a former New York Times columnist and is a regular contributor to the New Yorker.
Perkins said: “The Winner is everything I am looking for in fiction at the moment: enormous fun, but with a dark, powerful message at its heart. If you imagine a literary thriller that manages to skewer the rich in the vein of ’The White Lotus’ while starring Mrs Robinson and Tom Ripley, you might have a small idea of the brilliant novel Teddy has written.”
