Tendai Huchu's two-book deal with Pan Macmillan's Tor

Tendai Huchu, writing as T L Huchu, has a "super-dope" two-book deal about an Edinburgh ghost talker with Pan Macmillan’s Tor imprint.

Tor acquired world rights from the Ampersand Agency. The novel The Library of the Dead is scheduled for publication in spring 2021.

amaBooks published Tendai Huchu’s most recent novel The Maestro, The Magistrate and The Mathematician, which has been a success with the rights for the novel being acquired by publishers in the States, Nigeria, Germany and the United Kingdom, but this new deal with a major world publishing group marks a significant step forward in his writing career.

There is a short story 'The Library of the Dead' in the amaBooks anthology Moving On and other Zimbabwean Stories, but, unlike the story, the novel is set in Edinburgh and the main protagonist in the novel is female not male, but the occult library still features and it will be interesting for Tendai Huchu fans to read both. 

The synopsis of the first novel in the two part deal, The Library of the Dead, reads: ‘Ropa dropped out of school to become a ghost talker and now speaks to Edinburgh’s dead, carrying messages to the living. A girl’s gotta earn a living, and it seems harmless enough. Until, that is, the dead whisper that someone’s bewitching children – leaving them husks, empty of joy and life. It’s on Ropa’s patch, so she feels honour-bound to investigate. But what she learns will change her world. She'll dice with death (not part of her life plan . . .), discovering an occult library and a taste for hidden magic. She'll also experience dark times. For Edinburgh hides a wealth of secrets, and Ropa’s gonna hunt them all down.’

Tendai Huchu said of the deal: ‘This is super-dope; I’m thrilled to be working with Bella and the guys at Tor. I’m a bibliophile, foremost, and Tor publishes a whole bunch of some of my favourite authors working today. So to be a part of that is pretty cool. This book was a labour of love for me and I hope readers will enjoy meeting Ropa Moyo and her upside-down version of Edinburgh.’

Bella Pagan, executive director at Tor, said: ‘I feel I’ve been waiting forever for just this brilliantly inventive book. And now we’ve acquired it, I couldn’t be happier. It’s smart, fast-paced, witty and vividly imagined. Our heroine Ropa Moyo is amazing too, mixing up Zimbabwean magic with her Scottish wit and pragmatism. For those that adore Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series and Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’, this is the book you’ve been waiting for.’