Virago lands rights to Italian bestseller by Raimo

Virago has acquired UK rights to the bestselling Italian title Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo. 

Anna Kelly acquired the rights from Lucy Luck at C&W on behalf of Anna Stein at Creative Artists Agency. Virago will publish in August 2023.

Film/TV rights were sold at auction to Fandango, and rights have been sold in seven territories, including in the US, where it will be published by Grove Atlantic in June 2023.

The synopsis reads: “Lost on Me is the first-person account of Vero, who has grown up in Rome with her eccentric family: an omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety, a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions, and a precocious genius brother at the centre of their attention. As she becomes an adult, Vero’s need to strike out on her own leads her into bizarre and comical situations: she tries (and fails) to run away to Paris at the age of 15; she moves into an unwitting older boyfriend’s house after they have been together for less than a week; and she sets up a fraudulent (and wildly successful) street clothing stall to raise funds to go to Mexico. Most of all, she falls in love – repeatedly, dramatically, and often with the most unlikely and inappropriate of candidates.” 

The Italian version of Lost on Me was shortlisted for the Strega Prize and won the Strega Giovani Prize and the Viareggio Rèpaci Prize. Over 100,000 copies have sold to date, according to the publisher. 

Kelly said: “Lost on Me is a gloriously funny novel about sex, love, friendship, family – and how a writer transforms her life into art. The voice is addictive – as wryly ironic as it is warm and affectionate – and seductively explores the slippery relationship between deceitfulness and creativity (beginning with Vero’s first artistic achievement: a painting she steals from a school classmate and successfully claims as her own). Deceptively simple, its tenderness offset by moments of cool brutality I will never forget, this short novel is a masterwork of human observation.”

Raimo contributes cultural articles to various Italian publications, and her translations into Italian include works by F Scott Fitzgerald, Octavia E Butler, Ray Bradbury and Ursula K Le Guin. She lives in Rome.