Booker Prize-winning publisher Oneworld has acquired the rights to Diary of a Magpie, the debut offering by British-Ghanaian author and lawyer Marie Claire Amuah.

The Bookseller reports that “UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, were acquired in a two-book deal from Juliet Mushens at Mushens Entertainment, and Oneworld will publish the debut as a super-lead hardback in autumn 2022. Ellis Moore at Bolinda pre-empted audio rights.”

Amuah was born to Ghanaian parents and raised in Southwest London. She is a Senior Associate at Edmonds Marshall McMahon. Her forthcoming novel is touted as “a wonderfully immersive novel for readers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Helen Oyeyemi.”

Read the full synopsis below;

“Stella is born into the chaos of domestic violence and struggles to make sense of the world around her. She touches wood so that bad things won’t happen to her or her family—until she learns a poem about Magpies, ‘one for sorrow…’.

“Stella excels academically and achieves professional fulfilment and success once she leaves home. However, she is unable to make evidence-based conclusions about events that unfold around her. Stella continues to rely on superstition to provide meaning to her life; to control the otherwise uncontrollable. She feels her greatest personal happiness when she falls in love, but learns that magpies alone can’t protect her from heartbreak, and that the impact of her childhood is something she will have to face, one way or another.”

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