Head of Rights
For German, Dutch, Greek, Middle Eastern, North African, Scandinavian, Turkish, UK and US inquiries
Foreign Rights Manager
For Asian, Brazilian, Eastern Europe, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, South American and Spanish inquiries
Dear friends,
We are delighted to unveil our 2024 Spring Fiction Rights List.
We will be attending the London Book Fair in March. Do send us an e-mail should you wish to book an appointment!
You can also drop by our stand at the IRC, tables U18 and U19.
Don’t forget to take a look at our 2024 Spring Non-Fiction Rights List.
We very much looking forward to hearing from you!
The Rights Team
Clovis Goux
A sterile, gerontocratic society grapples with a mystery that threatens to dredge up a sordid past.
In a not-too-distant future, Florida has seceded from the United States to create a federation of private communities exclusively reserved for retirees—The Villages. In this luxurious and artificial paradise designed by and for senior citizens, death, crime, and youth have been eradicated, only entertainment remains. However, the suspicious death of a French resident upsets the established order.
Accident, murder, or suicide? Thrown into the outrageous world of Florida’s United Villages, the journalist son of the deceased pieces together the disturbing events that led to his father’s demise. Overcome with grief, he delves into the past and awakens the region’s old demons. His search for the truth will take him behind the scenes and The Villages will reveal their true colours.
Satire, dystopia, or science fiction? Powerful and humorous, Extreme Paradise challenges our ambivalence to violence and society’s drift towards communitarianism. What if barbarity was a necessity? And what if the elderly were the future of humanity?
Clovis Goux is a journalist and author. His previous works are La Disparition de Karen Carpenter (Actes Sud, 2017), Chère Jodie (2020) and Les Poupées (2022), both published by Stock.
Tiphaine Auzière
A debut novel that unveils the inner workings of the justice system.
The criminal courts: a crossroads where destinies are shaped for better or worse. We follow Diane, a lawyer, and two of her clients: Laura, accused of the murder of her partner and abuser, and Jeanne, a young victim of incest trying to rebuild her life. How did they end up there? And what will become of them? Through the ups and downs of a trial, we accompany Diane as she develops a special rapport with Laura and Jeanne—the line between innocence and guilt is blurred. Between the ethics of justice and the ambiguity of human beings, individuals fall into an ever-shifting grey area.
In her debut novel, Tiphaine Auzière draws the reader into the heart of justice. We witness the fallout of shattered lives, we dive into the considerations of the plea, sometimes full of contradictions, and we question our own stance—what would we have done in their shoes?
Born in Amiens in 1984, Tiphaine Auzière is a lawyer registered with the Paris Bar. Assises is her debut novel.
Évelyne Bloch-Dano
Three women, two generations, a friendship that ebbs and flows, love at first sight, romantic interests, and a whole host of disappointments.
Anne, the narrator, is a zen-like feminist, a smiling stoic whose life mantra is “future suffering must be avoided”. She has taken up all the struggles of her generation, from ashrams in India to political utopias, to the point where she feels like just a collector’s item. Stella grows up determined not to be like her mother; she is passionate about her work, eager to find the one but unlucky in love. Does she know how to be happy? Her friend Violette, her soul sister, is her polar opposite. Gentle but determined, she embodies the voluptuous balance of the Loire countryside where she lives. She chose to dedicate her life to raising her children, but one day doubts arise…
In this novel, Évelyne Bloch-Dano delivers a work that is both feminine and feminist, driven by a vibrant desire for emancipation.
The biographer and essayist Évelyne Bloch-Dano is an award-winning and frequently translated author. Her books include the biographies Madame Zola (Grand Prix des lectrices Elle 1997) and Madame Proust (Prix Renaudot de l’essai 2004) as well as Jardins de papier (2015), Mes maisons d’écrivain (2019) and L’âme sœur (2021).
Katia Flouest
A gripping and intense debut novel in which love, frustration, and guilt intertwine.
Orphaned in 1991 when he loses his mother and his homeland Russia, Ivan is adopted by his uncle and arrives in Paris where he meets Vera. A passion is immediately ignited between the two teenagers, and they struggle to suppress their feelings. How would their parents, Élisabeth and Guy, react if they found out? The boundaries between love and desire are blurred, giving way to violence.
As soon as he is old enough, Ivan takes off back to Russia and cuts all ties with France. All except the memory of Vera, which distance cannot diminish. He becomes a photographer and joins the Khimki Forest Defense Movement, a direct-action group whose sometimes violent opposition to a motorway proposal leads to him being wanted for terrorism. Realising that it is impossible to escape his demons, he disappears again, withdrawing from the world to live as a recluse in the middle of the forest. But in abandoning himself to nature, what is he hoping to find? Redemption?
Katia Flouest was born in Paris. After studying literature and Russian, she worked in theatre as a playwright and artistic collaborator with various directors. She is also a translator.
Maria Pourchet
Prix de Flore 2023
Rights sold in Germany (Luchterhand), Israel (Hakibbutz Hameuchad), Italy (Rizzoli), the Netherlands (Meulenhoff), and Slovakia (Inaque).
Under option in Czech Republic (Euromedia) and Korea (Gimm Young).
A claustrophobic love story rewritten following the codes of a Western.
Aurore is a single mother in Paris, racing between meetings – with her son’s headmistress, her well-connected line-managers and, on her break, a lover. She’s functioning for now, but a Western is waiting for her with outstretched arms. When she implodes, she and her son take refuge in her mother’s empty family home on an arid limestone plateau in southwest France.
Alexis Zagner is the “face of the century”, a famous actor embarking on a defining performance in a new scripting of Don Juan. He can tell that times are changing and his all-consuming desire for the extremely young aspiring actress Chloé hasn’t gone unnoticed. His instincts urge him to make a rapid exit and he too heads west.
While a media storm brews, Aurore and Alexis start to confront each other but it’s not clear who will be the good guy in the white Stetson and who the outlaw in the black one.
A full gallop of a novel carried by dazzling writing. With humour that perfectly matches her feel for tragedy, Maria Pourchet delivers a profound reflection on our era, its violence and vulnerabilities and its language of love.
Maria Pourchet is a novelist. She is best know for Rome en un jour (2013), Toutes les femmes sauf une (winner of the 2018 SGDL Prix Révélation) and Feu (2021) which has been translated into five languages.
Panayotis Pascot
OVER 200,000 COPIES SOLD!
A mordant exploration of family ties and self-construction.
Are you familiar with Schopenhauer’s Hedgehog Dilemma? In cold weather, young hedgehogs try to huddle together to share body heat… but they have to keep their distance to avoid hurting one another with their spines.
Like them, the narrator tries to get close to his family – particularly his father – but he can’t do this without causing damage. Scouring through the last three years, he tackles the inescapable reasons for this: the news that his overbearing, ever-present father is incurably ill, the discovery that he himself is homosexual and the process of accepting himself, and his descent into depression.
With acerbic, pared-down prose, this gripping book propels us into universal questions that affect all young people coping with the need to complete their own metamorphosis.
Panayotis Pascot is a successful writer and comedian. After a two-year career in the French TV shows Petit Journal and Quotidien, he tried his hand at stand-up with Almost, available on Netflix. La prochaine fois que tu mordras la poussière is his debut novel.
Cédric Sapin-Defour
Prix 30 Millions d’Amis 2023
OVER 300,000 COPIES SOLD!
Film rights sold.
Rights sold to China (Shenzhen PH), Croatia (Profil), Czech Republic (Dobrosky), Germany (Insel Verlag, auctions), Greece (Kokkini Klosti Demeni), Italy (Salani, auctions), Japan (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, auctions), the Netherlands (Ambo/Anthos), Portugal (Lua de Papel), Romania (Humanitas, auctions), Slovenia (Zalozba Vida), Spain (Castilian: Ediciones B, WSL, auctions & Catalan: Mes Llibres) and UK (Harvill Secker, WEL, auctions).
A story of life, death, and love between two different species: a man and his dog.
A small ad in the local paper turns the narrator’s world upside down: a litter of Bernese Mountain dogs are looking for homes. The idea of curing of his loneliness with a new companion appeals to him and becomes inescapable once he meets the “puppy with the blue collar”. Just choosing a name is quite an adventure. The waiting is unbearable, like when lovers can’t be together. And all sorts of preparations are made for the new arrival.
As Ubac grows, he plays – in every sense – a bigger and bigger role in the narrator’s life. We witness the beginnings of an understanding that needs no words. Man and dog both crave their long walks in the mountains, hate to be apart, and protect each other. This special connection is then extended to new arrivals in the pack: Mathilde, Cordée and Frison.
Over the course of thirteen years, we’re kept in suspense by an unpredictable affection, a life lived too fast, the aching pain of separation and the happy memories that demonstrate a universal love.
Cédric Sapin-Defour is 47 and writes about the slightly crazy dream that “man and nature are learning to live together again”. His previous books are Gravir les montagnes est une affaire de style, Espresso (published by Guérin), and L’Art de la Trace (Transboréal).
Aurélien Bellanger
Aurélien Bellanger and the masterpiece of his youth meets Nicolas Poussin, the painter of eternal maturity.
Of all the museums in the world, why did Aurélien Bellanger choose to sleep at the Louvre among Poussin’s works, only two kilometres from his home? For him, it was a way of revisiting his younger years and reflecting on the absence of those of Poussin, who appears to have always been a classic.
When he spent the night in the Louvre, the author was in the process of rediscovering his own hidden masterpiece: a series of videos taken during his youth in Paris. He was halfway through watching this embarrassing and clumsy film when he found himself alone before Poussin’s paintings. It helped him to understand more than ever why Poussin would have hidden his early works, because there is always something shameful about youth. Especially when you want to be seen as a young artist like the author—gaining life experience, enduring failures, discovering his personality, and re-enacting the eternal comedy of moving to Paris and starting out in life.
Aurélien Bellanger was born in 1980 in Laval. He has published six novels including La Théorie de l’information (2012), and more recently Le Vingtième siècle (2023).
Yannick Haenel
Rights sold to Korea (Mujintree).
Option in Brazil (Record), Bulgaria (Paradox), China (Zhejiang University Press), Czech Republic (JOTA), Finland (Like), Germany (Rowohlt), Italy (Neri Pozza), Japan (Kawade Shobo Shinsha), the Netherlands (Meulenhoff), Poland (Wydawnictwo Literackie), Portugal (Teorema), Serbia (Zavet), Spain (Castilian: Acantilado & Catalan: Empuries), Sweden (Arche), Syria (Mamdouh Adwan) and the USA (Other Press).
An odyssey of intense sensations in which the author brings to light the tumult, sensuality, and depth of Francis Bacon’s work.
Struck with a migraine upon his arrival at the Francis Bacon exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, Yannick Haenel finds himself spending part of his night confined to a camp bed.
Taking a turn for the better, the author begins to wander through the exhibition gripped by intense highs and lows that he recounts like a voyage of discovery, revealing a lesser-known aspect of Bacon’s paintings—his sensual use of colour, and the sexual freshness of his blues.
At the request of the author, all the lights are turned off at three in the morning. The experience culminates in a light show to the soundtrack of David Bowie’s last song, the author losing himself in the museum with a torch in hand, dancing ecstatically as the paintings seem to jump off the walls.
Yannick Haenel was born in 1967. He has published ten novels, including Cercle (2007, Prix Décembre), Jan Karski (2009, Prix du roman Fnac, Prix Interallié) and Tiens ferme ta couronne (2017, Prix Médicis). He is also a columnist for Charlie Hebdo.
Jean-Luc Coatalem
Option in Spain (AdN).
Deep in the Guimet Museum, the author reels between different Asian enticements, confiding us a powerful sensory odyssey.
Why the Guimet Museum, devoted to Asian arts? It was to this exotic museum with its fertile stories and secrets from distant lands that Jean-Luc Coatalem’s grandfather came at weekends in the hopes of diluting his melancholia.
The museum will always be a special place for the author too. Cocooned by treasures from the likes of China, Indochina, southern India, Tibet, Japan and Afghanistan, he’s reminded of his childhood in Singapore. When the sandstone Buddhas, winged dragons and armies of Samurais are shrouded in darkness, they seem to come to life, frightening this lone visitor.
Over the course of this account, the line between the real and the imaginary blurs and Jean-Luc Coatalem starts to lose his bearings. But he decides to play on this disorientation and is eventually reconciled with his childhood.
Jean-Luc Coatalem is a writer and journalist whose most acclaimed books published by Stock are Mes pas vont ailleurs, about Victor Segalen and winner of the Prix Femina for an essay and the Prix de la Langue française; and La part du fils, shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Renaudot.