Greer’s ‘On Rape’ sold to Bloomsbury UK

Thursday, 26 July 2018 Books+Publishing

Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) has sold UK and Irish rights to Germaine Greer’s On Rape to Bloomsbury UK.

Bloomsbury won the rights at auction after 12 UK publishers reviewed the submission. MUP head of sales and marketing Emma Rusher told the Bookseller that On Rape is currently on submission in the US, France and several other territories with a first offer from Spain, with all deals being negotiated by Sharon Galant of Zeitgeist Literary Agency.

In her controversial essay, Greer writes that ‘centuries of writing and thinking about rape—as inflicted by men on women—have got us nowhere’.

MUP acquired the book earlier this year, with the news announced in a Sydney Morning Herald article in which Greer discussed the #MeToo movement and described it as ‘whinging’.

Greer’s comments about rape have been heavily criticised, with Everyday Sexism Project founder Laura Bates writing in the Guardian that ‘it is damaging and dangerous to suggest that rape is not a violent crime with a devastating long-term impact for many survivors’.

The book will be published by MUP in Australia and New Zealand on 1 September, and by Bloomsbury in the UK on 6 September .

Category: Local news Rights and acquisitions