More than 40 years after Erica Jong coined the term “zipless fuck” in Fear of Flying, her feminist novel of a young woman’s quest for sex with no strings attached, its heroine Isadora Wing is set to return in Fear of Dying. The new book promises to address “what it really takes to be human and female in the 21st century” and has been a major hit at this week’s London book fair.
Just acquired by Canongate in the UK, and St Martin’s Press in the US, with international publishers snapping up rights from Taiwan to Denmark, Fear of Dying is one of the hottest properties at the international publishing event. Jong has published more than 20 books, including a series of novels featuring Wing and a 1998 collection of essays What Do Women Want, making her “a pillar of the sexual revolution and a hero to millions”, according to Canongate. First published in 1973, Fear of Flying has sold more than 27m copies around the world – Naomi Wolf called it “the book that started it all by the woman who started it all”.
Fear of Dying tells the story of Vanessa Wonderman, a former actor in her 60s treading the tightrope between dying parents, an ageing husband, and a pregnant daughter, and finding that “the lack of sex in her life makes her feel as if she’s losing something too valuable to ignore”, said her US publishers.
Other major deals at the event in London’s Olympia have seen self-published writers snapped up for major sums. Meredith Wild, who hit the New York Times bestseller lists with her stories about a young businesswoman’s intense relationship with a billionaire, landed a “significant” six-figure deal with Transworld in the UK and a seven-figure US cheque, while according to Deadline.com, self-published phenomenon AG Riddle scored a seven-figure deal for his novel Departure, in which a plane from New York crash-lands in the English countryside.
A 25-year-old, Ghanaian-born Yaa Gyasi, sold her debut novel Homegoing for a reported seven-figure sum in the US as publishers worldwide flocked to sign her. Set in 18th-century Ghana, it follows the descendents of two half-sisters across three centuries of African and American history.
“Enormously ambitious, incredibly moving and deeply resonant, this is a rare novel about how history infuses all of our lives, said Mary Mount, who acquired the novel for Viking in the UK. “Yaa Gyasi has an incredible eye for character and sense of human emotion. It will be a hugely exciting novel to publish.”
Former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis, meanwhile, has won a book deal with a major publisher after submitting her manuscript pseudonymously. The Bookseller reported that Ellis’s A Little Learning would be set in the 18th century, and sees a girl taken advantage of by her tutor.
“We were hooked by the power of this incredibly vivid story from the outset,” Lisa Highton, publisher at John Murray imprint Two Roads, said. “I was surprised and delighted to find out the identity of the author, and we’re all excited to help launch the start of a great career.”
Footballer Didier Drogba has also been signed up to write his autobiography, out from Hodder & Stoughton in October and described by the publisher as an “unusually gripping and inspirational story”. Meanwhile, X-Files star Gillian Anderson, who recently released her first novel, is writing a self-help guide for women with the journalist Jennifer Nadel, according to the Bookseller.
The biggest non-fiction title of the fair, however, is likely to be the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu’s exploration of happiness, The Book of Joy, announced on Wednesday following a 12-way auction among publishers.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion