Iida Turpeinen’s debut Beasts of the Sea starred by the extinct, strange sea mammal, Steller’s sea cow, continues it journey to new areas.
Beasts of the Sea has written Finnish literary history on the international arena, as its rights were quickly sold to a dozen areas with aggressive pre-empts and in heated auctions. With its success, the novel is the internationally most widely sold Finnish language debut ever.
The latest foreign rights sales are to Slovenia, where the country’s biggest publishing house Mladinska acquired the rights. In Portugal, the rights were sold to Porto Editora, the publisher of authors such as José Saramago and Annie Ernaux and in Greece, to Ikaros, which publishes Odysseus Elytis, George Saunders and Marieke Lucas Rijneveld among others.
Currently, the rights have been sold to 14 areas, with offers on the table for two more (Catalan and Czech). The international publishers are:
World English, MacLehose and Little, Brown (pre-empted)
German, Fischer (pre-empted)
World French, Autrement (auction)
World Spanish, Seix Barral (pre-empted)
Italy, Neri Pozza (pre-empted)
Dutch, Singel (pre-empted)
Sweden, Albert Bonnier (pre-empted)
Norway, Gyldendal (pre-empted)
Denmark, People’s (pre-empted)
Estonia, Tänapäev
Greece, Ikaros
Hungary, Polar
Portugal, Porto Editora
Slovenia, Mladinska.