W&N triumphs in 11-way auction for 'genre-bending' Brooks novel

Weidenfeld & Nicolson has triumphed in an 11-way auction for a “genre-bending” literary novel by Sarah Brooks, signing a “major” six-figure deal for two books.

Publishing director Federico Andornino acquired UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, for The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands from Nelle Andrew at Rachel Mills Literary. North American rights were acquired by Caroline Bleeke at Flatiron in a six-figure pre-empt and foreign rights were also sold in Germany (Penguin), France (Sonatine), Italy (Bompiani), Spain (Urano), Norway (Gyldendal), Finland (Gummerus), Hungary (Libri) and Greece (Patakis). 

The novel—to be published by W&N in summer 2024 as its lead fiction title, supported by an “unmissable, groundbreaking” campaign—is set in the 19th century across a beautiful, remote, 3,000-mile stretch of the Trans-Siberian Express railway, known as “the Wastelands”. The book centres on Weiwei, who was born on the train and has never lived anywhere else. But on one journey the train starts to “misbehave and the old rules of the Wastelands seem to be changing”; Weiwei must “stop the train from breaking down and something else far more uncontrollable from breaking in”.

Andornino said W&N “left no stone unturned” in landing Brooks’ novel, which uses “a slightly twisted version of history to illuminate our present… [I was reminded] of encountering David Mitchell’s novels for the first time. It’s going to be—quite literally—the ride of a lifetime.”

Brooks won the Lucy Cavendish Prize in 2019 and a Northern Début Award for fiction from New Writing North in 2021. She works in East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds, where she helps to run the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing. She is co-editor of Samovar, a bilingual online magazine for translated speculative fiction. The author said the seeds of the novel came from an “unforgettable” journey on the Trans-Siberian Express two decades ago.

She said: “My own life was changed by submitting the first chapters to the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize: winning the prize introduced me to my amazing agent Nelle Andrew, who saw potential in the novel when it was still at a rather chaotic stage. Her patience and eye for a story helped keep the journey on track, and eventually guided us to Weidenfeld & Nicolson. I am beyond excited to be working with Federico Andornino and this wonderful publishing house: as soon as I met him and the team at W&N I was overwhelmed by their enthusiasm for the novel, and I can’t wait to work with them to bring the train and its story to readers.”