John Murray is delighted to announce the acquisition of a major new voice in fiction. THE NEGATIVE CUTTER by Beatrice Colin is a richly detailed historical novel about the changing nature of identity and the politics of friendship and love. Tracing the lives of two women from their childhood in the grim surroundings of a Catholic orphanage in Berlin in 1900, through tumultuous love affairs, disastrous marriages and the destitution in the years of economic collapse, THE NEGATIVE CUTTER intertwines the personal narratives of Lilly Nelly Aphrodite and her closest friend Hanne Schmidt with the rise of the first modern art form; cinema. Their trajectory echoes the brilliant but brief radiance of the Weimar Republic. Beatrice Colin is British and is based in Glasgow and has had a number of radio plays produced on the BBC.
Heather Barrett, Senior Editor at John Murray, acquired THE NEGATIVE CUTTER and another novel from Simon Trewin of PFD. In the United States the novel was acquired for a six-figure sum by Sarah McGrath at Riverhead/Penguin.
Heather Barrett said, “This is an exceptional debut by an incredibly talented British author. Blue Smoke is a gripping and darkly seductive account of two women whose destinies rise and fall with those of modernizing Germany. Beatrice Colin’s writing dazzles and chills as the novel foreshadows so much of the coming century, from the ascent of Hollywood to the horrors of the Second World War. I am thrilled to be publishing the next big name to watch in literary cross-over fiction.”
Simon Trewin said , “Beatrice is a huge talent. I couldn’t stop turning the pages. I am tremendously excited to be representing a novel of such scope, by a writer of such skill and ambition.”
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