Two Hachette authors have been selected as part of the major new Waterstone's 11 initiative, created to uncover and champion the very best in debut fiction for the year ahead.
Announced last Thursday, 20th January, at a reception in Waterstone’s flagship store in London’s Piccadilly, the 11 debut authors, including Téa Obreht (The Tiger's Wife, Orion) and Sarah Winman (When God Was a Rabbit, Headline), are expected to go on to achieve critical and commercial success for their debut novels.
The truly global list, that has a near 50/50 split between male and female authors, is as follows:
City of Bohane by Kevin Barry (Jonathan Cape, 7th April)
The Free World by David Bezmozgis (Viking, 7th April)
The Registrar’s Manual for Detecting Forced Marriages by Sophie Hardach (Simon & Schuster, 14th April)
22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson (Fig Tree, 28th April)
Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka (Jonathan Cape, 7th April)
Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman (Bloomsbury, 7th March)
The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith (Bloomsbury, 4th April)
The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (Orion, 10th March)
The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud (William Heinemann, 7th April)
The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed (Viking, 24th February)
When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman (Headline, 3rd March)
Waterstone’s Managing Director, Dominic Myers, said:
“I am in the book business because I love finding great new writing, and I know I am not alone in that passion. Our first Waterstone’s 11 is quite genuinely one of the most exciting and remarkable collections of debut novels I’ve seen in my career. It’s going to be a great year for fiction”.
Waterstone's Head of Fiction, Toby Bourne, said: "We aspire to make the Waterstone's 11 one of the first major fixtures of the literary calendar, annually introducing our squad of authors en masse to the media, and supporting their titles as they are published. This will culminate later in the year when we promote all 11 titles together in a front-of-store promotion."
As well as hosting a reception for London’s literati, Waterstone’s commissioned leading photographer Fergus Greer to capture an image of all 11 authors, and produced a limited edition book containing extracts from each of the Waterstone's 11 titles to mark the occasion.