Penguin Random House imprint Jonathan Cape has acquired a debut novel by award-winning, critically acclaimed short-story writer Anneliese Mackintosh.

Editorial Director Alex Bowler signed UK and Commonwealth rights to SO HAPPY IT HURTS by Mackintosh from Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann Agency, following an auction.

Bowler said: 'SO HAPPY IT HURTS is the story of a year in the life of Ottila McGregor. A particularly significant year, given that thirty-year-old Ottila has led what you might call a 'colourful life' to date. But now she's going to give up the drink and plough a monogamous furrow and become so happy it hurts. But life, of course, doesn't work like that. In this book Anneliese has conjured a remarkable, hilarious and starkly honest voice; a beautifully confused and ever-hopeful heroine, who you can't help but root for; and a book – a grangerised scrapbook of a diary, composed of receipts, emails, a boyfriend's note rescued from the bin, and various other found objects – that looks like nothing else. An infectious, one-off of a novel, from an uncategorisable young writer with the brightest of futures.'

Anneliese Mackintosh is the author of short story collection ANY OTHER MOUTH, published by Freight Books in June 2014. It won the Green Carnation Prize, and was shortlisted for the Saltire Society's First Book Award and Edge Hill Short Story Prize. The Guardian praised ANY OTHER MOUTH for being 'a fantastic, cleanly focused book that's hilarious and heartbreaking", The Independent said of Anneliese, 'Mackintosh is a real talent and ANY OTHER MOUTH is remarkable', and The List called her "one of the UK's most exciting new voices"

SO HAPPY IT HURTS is due for publication in Spring 2017. Audio rights were sold at auction to Audible.