Here's a burst of overseas-related developments.
We've acquired local rights to four overseas-originated books in the last week:
The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng (a debut novel, published in the UK several months ago by Myrmidon, and now longlisted for this year's Man Booker Prize). This is a beautiful, epic tale of friendship, set in Malaya during World War II. We're publishing it in October.
The Anatomist by Bill Hayes (a biography, with imbedded illustrations, of the author Henry Gray and his collaborator, H V Carter, who created the anatomical illustrations for Gray's Anatomy, one of the most famous books in the English language). This will be published by Ballantine in the US on Boxing Day this year, and by us in early February 2008.
The End Of America by Naomi Wolf, an electrifying presentation and critique of the US's descent into a 'fascist shift'. It will be published by Chelsea Green in the US in September and by us in early October. It should be read alongside Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson, which we're also publishing in October.
The Accidental Guerilla by David Kilcullen, a former Australian army officer, guerrilla warfare expert, and nowadays a highly influential 'warrior intellectual' who has been seconded as senior counter-insurgency advisor to General David Petraeus, the commanding general of the US multinational task force in Iraq. Kilcullen was profiled in The Weekend Australian on 18-19 August, the day after we acquired his book. We'll be publishing Kilcullen's book in late 2008/early 2009. It will be published more or less simultaneously in the US by the trade division of Oxford University Press and in the UK by Hurst.
We've also just licensed UK rights in our instant best-seller, Buying a Piece of Paris by Ellie Nielsen, to Atlantic Books. US rights are under negotiation.