Simon Prosser, Publishing Director of Hamish Hamilton, has acquired British and Commonwealth rights for Jonathan Safran Foer’s third novel, Escape from Children’s Hospital, the follow-up to the internationally-acclaimed, bestselling Everything is IlluminatedandExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
A fictionalised account of a life-changing event that happened to the author as a nine-year-old - an explosion in a summer camp science class, which left his best friend without skin on his face or hands, and whose brunt the author avoided by inches and for no good reason - this is a story about the shared trauma of childhood, the potential destructiveness of storytelling, and the redemptive power of friendship. Weaving precariously between non-fiction and fiction, and existing at the intersection of different styles (suspense, memoir, imaginative storytelling), the book moves out from that moment in 1985 to the repercussions on the ever-expanding circle of those affected by it.
Explaining his ambition for the book, Jonathan Safran Foer writes: ‘What actually happened that day? What is a novel capable of? These are the two questions I have been living inside of, and I hope they will answer one another: my novel is what happened that day; and a truthful, experiential telling of that day is what the novel is capable of.’
Simon Prosser comments: ‘I couldn’t be more excited about a novel or about a writer - and I am thrilled that we are the first of Jonathan’s publishers to acquire this book.’
