Vijay Khurana's 'strikingly controlled' debut novel goes to Peninsula

Peninsula has snapped up Vijay Khurana’s "strikingly controlled" debut novel, The Passenger Seat, which was Runner-Up in last year’s Novel Prize — run by Fitzcarraldo, New Directions and the Giramondo Novel Prize.

Director Will Rees acquired UK rights from Philip Gwyn Jones of Greyhound Literary, while Australian and New Zealand rights were sold to Ultimo Press. North American rights have been acquired by Biblioasis. All three editions will be published between March and May 2025. 

The book is described as a "riveting interrogation of how men learn to be male by being with and performing for other men". The book’s synopsis adds: "It has a pair of wannabe rebel teens, Alvin and Teddy, impulsively fleeing their over-familiar, under-powered small-town existence to drive a car north and then further north, with no particular place to go, and no consistent sense of who is at the wheel. Their relationship fluctuates as much as their emotions and their intentions; they drive more or less deliberately into a ditch out of which they cannot readily escape."

Rees said: “A grim sense of predestination hangs over Vijay Khurana’s remarkable debut, which keeps its sights set on the point where vulnerability edges into violence, alienation into aggression. Eschewing any easy moralism, The Passenger Seat documents an oscillating power dynamic so that readers, like the characters themselves, are constantly made to question who is driving whom.”

The author, who is currently working towards a PhD in Writing at Queen Mary, University of London, added: “I’m excited to be working with such bold presses and three extremely perceptive and incisive editors. The Passenger Seat is in great hands, and I’m very happy to know it will soon be in readers’ hands, too.”

Translation and screen rights are controlled by Greyhound, and all rights enquiries should go to Sam Edenborough at sam@greyhoundliterary.co.uk.