Affirm acquires White’s The Long Night

Affirm Press has acquired world rights to Christian White’s upcoming crime novel, The Long Night, via RGM Artists.

The story follows Em and Jodie as they negotiate the events of one night, in White’s ‘darkest and most exhilarating novel yet’, said the publisher.

‘Em has lived a quiet life with her complicated mother and is now looking for love and a potential escape from her small hometown. When a masked man kidnaps her in the dark of night, though, she is drawn into a terrifying world,’ said the publisher. ‘Jodie has been trying to forget a troubling time in her life, pouring her trauma into her work and out of her mind. Until one night her daughter is kidnapped and Jodie is dragged back into the violence. As Em and Jodie race into the darkness, the agony of the past rushes up to meet them. It will take all their devotion and courage to escape this night alive.’

White is an author and screenwriter. His debut novel, The Nowhere Child (Affirm 2018), won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for an unpublished manuscript. His fourth novel, The Ledge (Affirm 2024), was named QBD Book of the Year.

Affirm Press publishing director Cate Blake said, ‘Christian has been at the forefront of Australian crime writing for years now and The Long Night is his most gripping book yet. Wildly propulsive and cinematically intense, this is guaranteed to keep readers up for their own long night as they race to the heart-stopping ending.’

White said, ‘The Long Night has a lot of what my readers like about my previous novels, but it also goes to some much darker places. If I can give just one reader nightmares, then I’ve done my job.’

Affirm plans to publish The Long Night in November 2025.

Photo credit: Meghan Lawson.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions