Penguin Random House imprints Cape in the UK and Knopf in the US have acquired the new novella from the highly respected British writer Tessa Hadley. At Cape, publishing director Hannah Westland, acquired British Commonwealth rights in The Party from Caroline Dawnay at United Agents. North American rights have been acquired by Jennifer Barth at Knopf. The New Yorker published the first section of the novella earlier this month. The Party will publish in the UK in November 2024.
Set in post-war Bristol, the novel is a coming-of-age story about two young women. Westland said: “What an extraordinary treat we have been given by Tessa Hadley, a perfect novella to publish in time for Christmas. Taking place over the course of a few days in deep midwinter and following the lives of two sisters as they turn towards adult freedom, this book is a distillation of everything that is exceptional about Tessa’s work; the magnetic and intimate evocation of time and place, superb characterisation, moral ambiguity, the allures and perils of desire. She is one of the great contemporary writers and we know this new book will delight her existing fans and win her many new ones.”
Hadley is often described as a ‘writer’s writer’ and the judges of the Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction which she won in 2016, state that her writing “brilliantly illuminates ordinary lives with extraordinary prose that is superbly controlled, psychologically acute, and subtly powerful”.
She is one of the New Yorker’s most published fiction writers and novelist Zadie Smith calls her as “my favourite writer”.