Affirm acquires Lim’s new novel

Affirm Press has acquired world rights to Rebecca Lim’s latest novel, The Graduate, via Annabel Barker Agency.

The novel follows graduate Fei Fei Chou, a quiet misfit in a prestigious law firm. But Fei is there for revenge. Around 30 years earlier, 3 school girls were kidnapped and abused; and Fei’s new law firm holds the records of the people who did it.

“The Graduate is a mesmerising legal thriller and a masterfully dark crime debut,” said the publisher.

Lim is a writer, illustrator, editor and lawyer. She is the author of more than 20 books, including Tiger Daughter (A&U Children’s, 2021), which was a Kirkus, Amazon and Booklist Best Book, CBCA Book of the Year and a Victorian Premier’s Literary Award winner; Two Sparrowhawks in a Lonely Sky (A&U Children’s, 2023), which won the ARA Historical Novel Prize and was the NSW History Award winner; and Our Family Dragon (ills by Cai Tse, Albert Street Books).

Her work has been shortlisted for the Margaret and the Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary Award, shortlisted for the Queensland Literary Awards, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, the Aurealis Awards and more.

Lim said, “I am thrilled to be publishing The Graduate with the marvellous crew at Affirm Press, who saw something in this when many other publishers could not see that its underlying messages and themes are entirely consistent with my existing body of work: broadening the idea of what it means to be ‘Australian’ and where ‘Australian stories’ can take us beyond the usual suspects and locations.”

Affirm Press publisher Ruby Ashby-Orr said, “From my first read, what caught me about this novel was the voice: assured, deliciously cynical and deeply, darkly funny. What kept me reading was a fascinating mystery, one that built towards a shocking body-slam of an ending.”

Affirm has scheduled The Graduate for May 2026.

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions