HarperCollins acquires Mason’s next novel

HarperCollins has acquired ANZ rights to Sophie, Standing There by Meg Mason, via a deal brokered by Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown.

Sophie, Standing There is a novel about “love, loneliness and finding connection in the most unlikely of places,” according to the publisher.

Mason began her career in journalism, writing for the Times, Vogue, ELLE, GQ and more. She is the author of Sorrow and Bliss (Fourth Estate, 2020), which was published in 30 territories, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2022, and won the Fiction Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, Mason lives in Sydney with her husband and 2 daughters.

Mason said, “If I ever wrote another novel, I told a friend, I wanted it to be so different from the previous ones that AI would be confused as to who it was by. After a year of experimenting, I discovered that, to do it, I only needed to write a protagonist who is cheerful. And kind and grateful and, in Sophie’s case, stoic in the face of vicissitude, and, every day, writing her felt like such a happy act of rebellion.

“Setting the novel at a literary festival let me put down on the page everything I know about being a reader, how we can feel close to but not quite in the world of books and authors. With Sophie a latecomer to reading, the novel is also happily autobiographical (I didn’t pick up a book voluntarily until I was almost 18), and I hope it will reach those like us who read always with a sense of being behind, and uncertainty as to whether we quite count.

“Submitting the manuscript, I wasn’t sure how excited my publishers would be about a novel that is the departure I hoped for, which makes me incredibly grateful to HarperCollins Australia, HarperCollins US and Bloomsbury UK for their passion in publishing Sophie.”

Publisher Catherine Milne said, “I didn’t think that I could love a novel as much as Sorrow and Bliss. But when I finished reading Sophie, Standing There for the first time, I was as full of emotion as it was possible to be, all choked up, so happy and sad and replete and wanting more, all at the same time. It is an almost unbearably poignant novel, bruisingly tender, slyly funny and painfully true – and gloriously bookish to boot.”

HarperCollins plans to publish Sophie, Standing There in August.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions