We are thrilled to announce we’ve acquired world rights in Laura Jean McKay’s debut novel, The Animals in That Country, a literary spec-fic novel that imagines a world in which humans and animals might finally understand each other.
The story follows Jean, a hard-drinking grandmother who is working as a guide in a remote wildlife park when the country is struck by a strange flu, and people begin to understand what animals are saying — first mammals, then birds and insects, too. Jean and Sue the dingo take off across country in search of their kin, past abandoned farms and single men holed up in pubs, drinking their way through the animal apocalypse. The Animals in That Country is a contemporary take on the Australian road story, in which, as humans are finally able to put words to their complex relationships with other animals, they are also confronted with their own animality.
Associate publisher Marika Webb-Pullman, who acquired the novel, said: ‘The premise thrilled me from the second I heard about it, and it's exhilarating to see its potential so well realised. In wild, poetic, vivid prose, Laura imagines animals in a way that’s entirely fresh and original; the solution she's found for describing how their language might work is ingenious. She's captured a darkly funny, twisted, and fraught animal world that is both captivating and feels entirely possible. The Animals in That Country is that rarest of beasts — fiction that has the ability to challenge the way readers think without sacrificing any of the pleasure of reading, and I think it will hit a chord internationally as well as here.’
Laura Jean McKay said: ‘I am utterly delighted to find a home for The Animals in That Country at Scribe. Working with Marika Webb-Pullman to finely tune this novel — five years in the researching and writing — is a dream come true. I've spent a lot of time with these very vocal human and nonhuman animal characters and can't wait for others to spend time with them, too.’
Laura Jean McKay is the author of Holiday in Cambodia (Black Inc. 2013), shortlisted for three national book awards in Australia. Her work appears in Meanjin, Overland, Best Australian Stories, The Saturday Paper and The North American Review. Laura has a PhD from the University of Melbourne focusing on literary animal studies and she is currently the ‘animal expert’ presenter on ABC Listen’s Animal Sound Safari.
The Animals in That Country will publish in the UK and Australia in 2020.