Press Release
John Murray acquires brilliant new title by Lloyd Jones01/03/2010
John Murray are delighted to announce the acquisition of Lloyd Jones’s new novel: Hand Me Down World. Roland Philipps acquired UK and Commonwealth (excluding ANZ and Canada) rights in a sealed deal from Sarah Lutyens at Lutyens & Rubinstein on behalf of Text Publishing in Australia.
Roland Philipps, Managing Director of John Murray, says: “These pages are well worth the wait - they are poignant beyond words, brilliantly structured, the novel has major underlying issues for reading groups; and there are those wonderful Lloyd Jones flashes of humour, and above all his deep humanity. The hundreds of thousands who enjoyed Mister Pip will love this.”
Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip was a worldwide bestseller. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2007, having won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize the same year. Published to much critical acclaim, it put Lloyd Jones on the map in the UK. D.J. Taylor wrote of it, “rarely … can any novel have combined charm, horror and uplift in quite such superabundance” and Simon Jenkins called it, “a minor masterpiece, thoughtful way beyond the simple poignancy of its tale and one of the best Booker candidates in years”.
Hand Me Down World is set around a nameless African girl, who sees her baby taken away from her and pursues him to Berlin. Her encounters with an array of individuals along the way give the book its kaleidoscopic approach and haunting tone.
Text Australia and Penguin New Zealand will be publishing simultaneously with John Murray in November 2010. The paperback will be published next spring.
For further information, please contact Nikki Barrow, Publicity Director, John Murray on 020 7873 6440.