Beasts of the Sea, the wildly successful debut of author Iida Turpeinen, continues to stun the international publishing scene. The title is now travelling to Japan and the Arabic world, marking 22 language territories.
Stunning news for our fiction list: Beasts of the Sea, the literary sensation from Finland of 2023 by author Iida Turpeinen, continues to enchant publishers all over the world. The rights have now been acquired for both Japanese and World Arabic, marking 22 language territories for this title.
The Japanese rights have been acquired by Kawade Shobo Shinsha, one of Japan’s leading publishers of books, in a deal brought to us by Tuttle Mori Literary Agency. Kawade Shobo Shinsha have over a century of experience in the publishing industry, having started in 1886. They have since then been the home of domestic bestsellers like Amy Yamada’s “Bed Time-Eyes” (1985) and Machi Tawara’s “Salad Memorial Day”(1987) and of international authors of high profile like Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Vladmir Nabokov, and Desmond Morris, among others.
The World Arabic rights have been acquired by Al Arabi, an Egypt-based publishing house that is the home to a wide range of international authors, from Frantz Kafka, Peter Handke and Herman Koch to Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, Jon Gnarr and many others, including fellow Finnish authors Sofi Oksanen and Juhani Karila.
Beasts of the Sea is a spellbinding story of long-gone species and human destinies where an unknown sirenian is discovered by biologist Georg Vilhelm Steller, who plans on bringing its skeleton to Europe to study it, until fate gets in the way: Steller dies before succeeding, and the sea cow goes extinct in a mere couple of decades due to human greed. Thus begins the quest for the skeleton of this lost creature, in an attempt to bring back what mankind has destroyed.
Beasts of the Sea has enchanted readers and critics in Finland, where it also won the Helsingin Sanomat literary prize for the best debut last autumn, and publishers everywhere, receiving extensive attention and media coverage even internationally.
Author Iida Turpeinen (b. 1987) is a Helsinki-based literary scholar currently writing a dissertation on the intersection of the natural sciences and literature.
Warmest congratulations to the author and the publishers!