HarperCollins acquires new Heyman fiction
HarperCollins has acquired world rights to Circle of Wonders, a novel by Kathryn Heyman.
The novel follows Roni over the course of a lunar month. ‘Roni has lived with breast cancer, in and out of remission, for well over a decade, and now it has reached her bones, her lungs and her liver. On the other side of the mountain ridge, Roni’s mother, Sylvie, lies waiting for her own death in the public hospital.
‘As time runs out for them both, Roni makes plans to die better than she has lived. But, as ever, the women around her are left scrambling to pick up the pieces she has dropped,’ said the publisher. ‘For all of them, this month will change everything – it will teach them not how to die, but how to live.’
Kathryn Heyman is the author of 7 novels as well as a memoir, a poetry collection and several dramas for stage and for BBC radio. Her work has won numerous awards in Australia and the UK, including the Arts Council of England Writers Award, the Wingate, the Hallam Poetry Prize and the Southern Arts Awards.
She has also been nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Scottish Writer of the Year Award, an Edinburgh Fringe Critics’ Award, the Kibble Prize, and a Western Australian Premier’s Book Award.
Heyman said, ‘This novel is so precious to me, and I can’t wait for readers to meet Roni, her circle of women and the everyday wonders that sustain them.’
HarperCollins head of fiction Catherine Milne said, ‘This is a concentrated jewel of a story, one of the most special I think I will ever publish. It is about death, yes, but it is also a story which illuminates life.
‘It is a novel that insists that despite the grief and the pain and the loss in our lives, there is also all this […] beauty. It is a heart-expanding novel that shows us that death is not to be feared, and what it is to truly live. It is devastating, uplifting and transforming.
‘I love it so much, and I know many, many readers will too.’
HarperCollins plans to publish Circle of Wonders in April 2026.
Photo credit: Luke Stamboulah.
Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions
