Fourth Estate acquires Australian debut

HarperCollins acquired ANZ rights to A Tabernacle for the Birds in a two-book deal with the Blake Friedmann Literary Agency. It will be published in April 2015 under the Fourth Estate imprint.

The novel is set in 1929 ‘when three people find themselves washed up on the steps of Miss Du Maurier’s bohemian boarding house in Sydney’, said HarperCollins in a statement. ‘Ari is a young Jewish man, a pogrom orphan who lives under the stern rule of his rabbi uncle, while dreaming his father is Houdini. Upon his hand he bears the forbidden mark—a tattoo—and has a secret ambition to be a magician. He finds an injured parrot and is unsure of how to care for it, until he meets Lily, a girl after his own abracadabra heart. But the wild card in the pack is Billy, who harbours secrets desires of his own…’

Fourth Estate publisher Catherine Milne called the debut ‘a stunningly original novel’. ‘Imagine if you will Oscar and Lucinda, but told through a dark Tim Burton-esque lens’.