Photo: Ebony Lamb Photography
A New Zealand author is "pinching" herself after a UK bidding war over her novel.
Catherine Chidgey's dystopian ninth novel The Book of Guilt is a "sinisterly skewed version" of the UK in 1979. The story follows 13-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William, who are the last remaining residents of a home that's part of the government's 'Sycamore Scheme'.
The best-selling, award-winning author has been with her New Zealand publisher Te Herenga Waka University Press since her first novel came in in 1998, she told RNZ's Nights.
While her books have been published by a variety of UK houses too, her London agent sent The Book of Guilt to a select list of editors, Chidgey said.
Multiple offers subsequently came in so her agent accepted one as a "floor offer".
"She then let all the other interested parties know that this is the opening bid. And if you want in, if you want a chance at getting the rights for The Book of Guilt, then you need to better that offer by Monday, I think the deadline was."
Further offers came in, she said.
"Everyone was frantically checking with their finance people at the publishing houses to see if they could make an offer, and how much they could make and how high they could go.
"And it was all completely thrilling."
Eventually they accepted an offer from long-established publishing house John Murray, that multiplied many times over the opening offer, she said.
"They've been around since 1768, they published Darwin, they published Arthur Conan Doyle and Jane Austen. They were publisher to Queen Victoria, and more recently, they've published Booker-shortlisted Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies."
She was thrilled to be part of the John Murray stable, she said.
"My editor, the one who was bidding and who bought the rights, Nicholas Pearson, is Hilary Mantel's former editor. All through her Wolf Hall books, he was her editor. So that's amazing."
Pearson was determined to secure the rights, she said.
"Carolyn sent me some of his emails, and he said that he read The Book of Guilt, frantically, finished it at 6am on a dewy deck chair in his garden, and turned up at her office first thing in the morning to be there before she got there, to sit there in front of her in person and say, I have to have this book."
Meanwhile, a similar bidding war was underway for the German translation rights, she said.
"I'm kind of pinching myself still. I really am and I've been sitting on the news since June, but now it's done, now that it's public and the announcements being made, it's all starting to feel much more real."
The Book of Guilt is out in May 2025.
