ARCADIA BOOKS newsflash On the eve of the London Book Fair, Arcadia is delighted to announce three pre-emptive offers which have just been finalised, all titles for 2015 publication. Comrade Baron: A Journey Through the Vanishing World of the Transylvanian Aristocracy is a nonfiction work by the award-winning Dutch novelist Jaap Scholten, who now lives in Budapest. It traces the lives of members of the Transylvanian aristocracy before and after March 1949, when the collectivisation of agriculture under the new communist regime included the expropriation and deportation of all large landowners, and is based on interviews with surviving Transylvanian aristocrats. The book was published to acclaim in the Netherlands in 2010, when it was awarded the Libris History Prize and was shortlisted for the Bob den Uyl Prize for Best Travel Book. Arcadias Piers Russell-Cobb and Gary Pulsifer met Jaap Scholten at the first Transylvanian Book Festival in September 2013 and were intrigued and impressed by the author and his tales - and the scope of his research. UK and Commonwealth rights were acquired from Uta Matten of the Shared Stories Author Agency in Amsterdam. Hotel Arcadia by Sunny Singh details a terrorist siege in a luxury hotel and features a war photographer famous for her hauntingly beautiful photographs of the dead. The novel, a powerful literary work which is as gripping as any upmarket crime fiction, unravels the senseless nature of terrorism itself and the quiet courage of those who find themselves in circumstances where they have no choice but to confront it. Sunny Singh is the author of two previous novels (Nanis Book of Suicides, winner of the Mar de Letras Prize, and With Krishnas Eyes). Her nonfiction includes Single in the City: The Independent Womans Handbook. She was born in India and currently lives in London. World English rights were acquired from Laura Susijn of the Susijn Agency, who has also sold French and Dutch rights in Hotel Arcadia pre-LBF. The Abrupt Physics of Dying by Paul Hardisty is an eco thriller in which one man risks his life to bring down an oil company. Claymore Straker, working as an oil company engineer in the wilds of Yemen, is hijacked at gunpoint by Islamic terrorists. As the country descends into civil war and village children start dying, Clay finds himself caught up in a ruthless struggle between opposing armies, those who would control the country’s oil wealth, Yemen’s shadowy secret service, and rival terrorist factions. Accused of a murder he did not commit, put on the CIA’s most wanted list, Clay must come to terms with his past and confront the powerful forces that want him dead. Paul Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a in 1993 and was one of the last westerners out of Yemen before the outbreak of the 1994 civil war. The Abrupt Physics of Dying is his first novel. Paul is director of Australia’s national climate change adaptation research programme and lives in Western Australia. World English rights were acquired from Broo Doherty of the DHH Literary Agency.
Posted on: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 18:22:13 +0000