Juliet Annan, Publishing Director at Fig Tree (an imprint of Penguin General), has acquired at auction the UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to a début novel by Anbara Salam from Hattie Grünewald at Blake Friedmann.

Set on a small island in the South Pacific, and centred around two missionaries, Max and his wife Bea, who have come to live there, this stunning début novel evokes the enchantment of Ann Patchett’s STATE OF WONDER and the wisdom of Barbara Kingsolver’s THE POISONWOOD BIBLE.

Anbara Salam is a Research Associate at the University of Oxford with a PhD in Theology. She was named after her great-grandmother (Anbara Salam Khalidi), a feminist translator and writer, and the first Lebanese woman to remove her hijab in public. She’s half-Palestinian and half-Scottish, has lived in Lebanon for a year and travelled extensively around the Middle East, Asia and Europe.

Juliet Annan says “Anbara is a thrilling new talent. This is a gripping, dark but also very funny novel that brilliantly evokes the jungle landscape and a particular era, and it is beautifully written. It darkens and becomes grotesque – but it is always full of feeling and suspense.”

Anbara Salam says “I am delighted to be joining the team at Fig Tree, and I’m so grateful to Juliet Annan and to my agent Hattie Grünewald for their enthusiasm for the book. It’s a huge honour to be part of Fig Tree’s list.”

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