HarperCollins acquires Johnston nonfiction title “Fifty Beating Wonders”
HarperCollins has acquired ANZ rights to the nonfiction title Fifty Beating Wonders by Michelle Johnston, via Martin Shaw at Shaw Literary.
Publisher Catherine Milne said, “This is the book that I have wanted Michelle Johnston to write since I first met her. An exceptionally talented writer, she is also an emergency physician and works at the emergency department of the Royal Perth Hospital. A doctor for over 30 years, her writing hums with intelligence, compassion, insight and humour.”
According to HarperCollins, Fifty Beating Wonders “travels into the emergency room and deep into the human body – and into the mind and the hands of one doctor trying to figure out why her heart is beating so fast every time she steps into that department.
“Over the course of one shift, and one catastrophic motorcycle crash, Fifty Beating Wonders goes on a journey behind the battered doors of an inner-city emergency department and into the wonders of the astonishing human body, to discover that in every unsung, overlooked part of what makes us human, there is absurdity, marvel, awe and surprise.”
A specialist at the Royal Perth Hospital emergency department and Professor of Emergency Medicine at SJOG Murdoch, Johnston is the author of the novels Dustfall (UWA Publishing), which was awarded the 2014 Hachette/Queensland Writers Centre Developing Manuscript award; Tiny Uncertain Miracles; and The Revisionists (both Fourth Estate).
Johnston said, “Fifty Beating Wonders is the book of my heart, quite literally. Thirty-five years in the making, it has allowed me to explore things about the body, about modern medicine and the people that practise it, that still bring me to my knees. Writing this book was my opportunity to share the astounding wonders of the mechanics of our body – the wildly fascinating and often unheeded aspects that make us us – with readers. It has also let me deconstruct what makes a life in emergency medicine so stressful and so rewarding (and, not infrequently, ridiculous).
“I am over the moon that HarperCollins and Catherine Milne will let these 50 odd and miraculous wonders out into the open and into the hands of anyone with an interest in their own wonderfully weird body and the strangers who are sometimes called upon to fix it.”
Milne likened the book to When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi, Vintage), Being Mortal (Atul Gawande, Profile) and The Emperor of All Maladies (Siddhartha Mukherjee, Fourth Estate), describing it as “absorbing, uplifting, moving and celebratory – a wonder indeed”.
HarperCollins plans to publish Fifty Beating Wonders in November.
Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions
