Gutkind Hummerens skjold Roman Caroline Albertine Minor FRANKFURT 2020 CONTENTS Literary Fiction - 3-27 Commercial Fiction - 28-38 Non Fiction - 39-56 Highlights - 57-60 RCW LITERARY AGENCY 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN 020 7221 3717 www.rcwlitagency.com Twitter: @rcwlitagency Instagram: @rcwliteraryagency FOREIGN RIGHTS Laurence Laluyaux, Stephen Edwards Katharina Volckmer, Tristan Kendrick Sam Coates, Natasia Patel [email protected] RCW Literary Agency FICTION 3 RCW Literary Agency 一个人的战争 [A WAR OF ONE’S OWN] Lin Bai IN ASSOCIATION WITH ARCHIPEL & SHANGHAI TRANSLATION Lin Bai’s autobiographical novel, A War Of One’s Own, is a powerful exploration of female sexuality and desire. Hugely influential when frst published in China twenty-fve years ago, its direct and emotionally honest examination of the female experience gave a voice to fiction women silenced by generations of repression. Born in a small town in rural China during the turbulent 1950s, Duomi Lin is left alone through much of her childhood and adolescence, discovering her sexuality at a young age and developing an obsession with death and childbirth. Almost friendless, with a dead father and emotionally distant mother, Duomi escapes into dreams and then into writing. Cast adrift, Duomi wanders China searching for meaning in her life. Writing remains her only constant. It is only once the Cultural Revolution ends that Duomi is able to start a new existence as a scriptwriter. However, she still feels strangely isolated, plagued by jealousy and uncertainty in her relationships with China: Hua Cheng Publishing House both men and women. Unable to satisfy her intense France: Editions You Feng passions, her happiness continues to be threatened… Korea: Munhakdongne Japan: Bensei Publishing Through Duomi’s coming-of-age story, Lin Bai makes a candid statement on same-sex attraction and self-denial, a critique on social suppression, and a declaration of what it means to be a woman in an ever more open China. in Bai was born in Guangxi Province, China in 1958. She has published nine novels and many novellas, Lshort stories and essays since the 1980s. A War of One’s Own (1994) established her as a pioneering writer of women’s literature in China. In 1998, Lin Bai won the frst Chinese Women’s Prize for Fiction. She was named “Novelist of the Year” by the Chinese Literature Media Prize in 2004 for the novel, The Records of Women’s Gossips. In 2013, her latest novel, The Chronicle of My Life in the North, won the prestigious Lao She Literature Prize. She lives in Beijing. Agent: Stephen Edwards Film Agent: Peng Lun, Archipel Press Word count: 120,000 Chinese characters / approx. 85,000 words in English Publication: 1994 4 RCW Literary Agency COME JOIN OUR DISEASE fiction Sam Byers Maya is homeless and living on an illegal encampment in London. The site is razed and Maya is detained, but then she learns that she has been chosen for a shot at redemption. She is offered a chance to be rehabilitated into society; to be given a job, a flat and an allowance - and to be become a polished, successful member of society. But she must document her progress on Instagram so that the tech company that is sponsoring her can gain corporate philanthropy points. Trapped in a cycle of numbing work and mindless self-improvement, Maya begins to understand why alienation from society results from a culture of being ‘perfect’. Feeling feverishly ill after a weekend detox retreat, she realises that sickness is an escape from unattainable ideals. With Zelma, an unemployed woman who she meets at the doctor’s, Maya begins to resist; frst by defacing adverts that promote impossible wellness, and then subverting her Instagram account into one of images of her own flth and defecation. UK: Faber, ed. Emmie Francis Once again excluded from productive society, Maya fnds liberation in an alternative community of women who celebrate a lifestyle of debauchery, unchecked consumption, ugliness, illness and decay. But conflict within the group builds, and controversy grows outside,and Maya is caught by the forces she has unleashed: liberation and madness, protest and anarchy, rebellion and chaos. Come Join Our Disease is a book about freedom, and how much of it any of us can truly withstand. am Byers is the author of Idiopathy and Perfidious Albion. Sales for previous title, Perfidious Albion: SHis work has been translated into multiple languages and his writing has appeared in Granta, The New York UK: Faber Times, The Guardian, and The Times Literary Supplement. Germany: Klett-Cotta Idiopathy was included on the Waterstones 11 list of debut novels to watch out for; shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Prize and the Desmond Elliot Prize; and won a Betty Trask Award. Perfidious Albion was longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and shortlisted for the Encore Prize Agent: Peter Straus Film Agent: Katie Haines, The Agency Word Count: 100,000 Publication: March 2021 5 RCW Literary Agency TRES MONEDAS [FATE] Jorge Consigilio This novel focuses on a group of characters who are all in different ways endeavouring to take control of their fate. Their desire to lead a genuine existence forces them to confront difficult decisions, and to break out of comfortable routines. fiction Karl and Marina have been together for ten years and have a young son, Simón. Karl is a German-born oboist at Argentina’s national orchestra, and Marina is a meteorologist. On a field trip, she meets fellow researcher Zárate, and what might have been just a fling starts to erode the foundations of her marriage. Then there is Amer, a dynamic and successful taxidermist. At a group therapy session for smokers, Amer falls for the younger Clara. While the relationship between Karl and Marina disintegrates, the love story between Amer and Clara is just beginning – or is it already at an end? One of Argentina’s leading contemporary writers, Jorge Consiglio portrays the inner worlds of these Spain: Eterna Cadencia characters through the minute details of their everyday UK: Charco lives, laying bare their strivings and their frustrations with a wry gaze, and seeking in this close-up texture a deeper truth. orge Consiglio was born in Buenos Aires in 1962. Sales for previous novel, Hospital Posadas: JHe has published five novels: El Bien (Award for Emerging Writers, Opera Prima, Spain), Gramática de Spain: Eterna Cadencia la sombra (2007; Third Municipal Prize for Novels), Pequeñas Intenciones (2011; Second National Prize for Novels, First Municipal Prize for Novels), Hospital Posadas (2015) and Tres Monedas (2018). He has also published three collections of short stories, five books of poems and a book of essays. Agent: Laurence Laluyaux Film Agent: Eterna Cadencia Word Count: Publication: 2018 6 RCW Literary Agency YIP fiction Paddy Crewe It is 1815 in the small town of Heron’s Creek, Georgia, when Yip Tolroy — mute, medical anomaly & social outcast — is born. His father has disappeared in mysterious circumstances, so he is raised by his mother: a powerful, troubled, independent woman who owns and runs a general store. She struggles to manage his needs, leaving Yip to find the means of asserting himself in an unforgiving, hostile environment. With the help of a retired doctor, he begins to transform his life by learning to read and write, his portal into the community a piece of slate and a supply of chalk. And then at the age of 15, Yip’s life is altered irrevocably. In the space of a few days he witnesses the discovery of gold, meets his faithful friend and comrade Dud Carter, and commits a grievous crime. Thrust unwittingly into a world of violence and sin, Yip and Dud are forced to leave town and embark on an odyssey that will introduce them to the wonder and horror of the American frontier until the revelation of a secret means they must return to Heron’s Creek and UK: Doubleday, ed. Suzanne Bridson the fate that awaits them. ‘What an astonishing book Yip is! Paddy Crewe has created something captivating, heart-breaking; I can’t recall encountering a writer who has such a striking voice right out of the gate. Packed with characters that live and breathe, Yip reckons with the seductive pull of the American story – and that country’s dark and complex histories, too. This debut marks the arrival of an extraordinary new talent.’ Erica Wagner addy Crewe was born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1991. PHe moved to London at the age of twenty-four to study at Goldsmiths, University of London. Yip is his first novel. Agent: Zoë Waldie Word Count: 100,000 Publication: Spring 2022 7 RCW Literary Agency 异兽志 [STRANGE BEASTS OF CHINA] Yan Ge Strange Beasts of China was written when Yan Ge was 21 and will be published by Tilted Axis later this year, for the first time in English, translated by Jeremy Tiang. Fable-like and masterful, it tells the story of a writer residing in the city of Yong’an, where fiction mysterious creatures exist alongside humans. They work in the local cotton mill, go to school and live in an old housing estate, and it isn’t always easy to tell them apart from the city’s human inhabitants. With the help of a young scientist the writer begins to seek the beasts out and catalogue them: the sorrowful beasts (much like humans, and often just as sad); the joyous beasts (seemingly happy but filled with fear and often terrifying); the sacrificial beasts (melancholy by nature, they love to destroy one another) and in so doing try to understand the myths around them, their fate in this world and why it is they’re there in the first place.