Jonathan Safran Foer‘s first novel in 11 years, HERE I AM, will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in September (Hamish Hamilton will publish the UK edition on September 29.) The NYT reports the novel, which FSG acquired as part of a three-book deal (which also includes another novel and a work of nonfiction), “unfolds over a single month in present-day Washington, as a Jewish family with three sons falls apart after the parents’ marriage falters. While the family implodes, relatives from Israel are visiting for the bar mitzvah of one of the sons. The drama unfolds as a larger catastrophe engulfs the Middle East, when a massive earthquake devastates the region and Israel is invaded.”
Foer’s most recent book EATING ANIMALS was published by Little, Brown, and in 2012 they and Hamish Hamilton announced the forthcoming publication of a different novel, ESCAPE FROM CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL. Foer apparently “got out of the contract” with Little, Brown and switched to FSG, reuniting with Eric Chinski, who had edited EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED at Houghton Mifflin. “It’s got this high-wire inventiveness and intensity of imagination in it, and the sheer energy that we associate with Jonathan’s writing, but it’s a big step forward for him,” Chinski said of Foer’s new novel. “It’s got a kind of toughness; it’s dirty, it’s kind of funny, like Portnoy’s Complaint, it exposes American Jewish life.”
In other forthcoming books news, Sourcebooks has announced an April publication for the late Heather McManamy‘s memoir, Cards for Brianna: A Lifetime of Lessons and Love from a Dying Mother to Her Daughter, written with William Croyle. The 36-year-old McManamy died of cancer last Wednesday. Sourcebooks signed her book — based on greeting cards she wrote to her four-year-old daughter Brianna to share advice and celebrate all of the significant moments she would experience in her life: first day of school, birthdays, wedding day, and even her first child — right before Thanksgiving and McManamy was able to finish the draft with her co-author.
And in January, Bloomsbury will publish their first French-language ebook, Coup de Foudre, — a €1.99 novella taken from a short story collection by Ken Kalfus published by Bloomsbury USA, also titled Coup de Foudre, A Novella and Short Stories. The story is “a fictional letter of apology from Dominique Strauss-Kahn to the Sofitel housekeeper Nafissatou Diallo.” The publisher notes, “We couldn’t resist translating this into French to see if the story takes off in France and other French speaking countries such as Canada and Belgium.”
In personnel news, Kristin Schultz has joined Random House Children’s Books as library coordinator, school & library marketing. Previously she was a high school teacher.