Scribe preempts unique Norwegian bestseller

Philip Gwyn Jones at Scribe has pre-empted world English rights in a Norwegian memoir that was the talk of Gothenburg Book Fair. By Long Litt Woon, it is billed as a memoir of mourning and mushrooms.

Long arrived in Norway from Malaysia as a university student. There she met and fell in love with a local man, Eyolf, and their marriage proved the strong force at the centre of her world for the next three decades until one day her husband set off for work as normal on his bike, only this time never to come back, and that world collapsed in on itself. Devastated and disoriented, she moved forward robotically, taking up the course at the Natural History Museum on mushroom identification that they had intended to do as a couple. And so she began to walk tentatively down the path into the woods that would eventually lead her through unanticipated riches out of the darkness into a new light. And what lit up her path were those magical, mysterious mushrooms about which she became so expert, passionate and a bewitching advocate. At the very end of the path lay her story in book form, The Path Back to Life: of Mushrooms and Mourning, which was published successfully in Norway by Vigmostad and Bjørke.

Philip Gwyn Jones says: ‘It became apparent to me that this was a unique creation, and one that could speak to many outside Norway too. Facetiously, I began to think of it as Grief Is the Thing with Mushroom Sauce, and on discussing with colleagues further decided it had to be for Scribe. (Scribe UK's MD Sarah Braybrooke, I now discovered, gave up many a Sunday to wandering the woodlands of Suffolk in the company of a charismatic mushroom forager. So Scribe's rightness for this project was written in the soil!) And of course we fervently hope that we can reach the levels of success achieved by another very distinctive Nordic memoir-guide, Lars Mytting's Norwegian Wood.’

Long Litt Woon says: ‘I am absolutely thrilled that Scribe has acquired rights for my book and I cannot wait to meet new English reading friends from around the world! Feeling excited, proud and happy!’

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Scribe preempts unique Norwegian bestseller

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