Korean thriller for Canongate

Deals in UK and US for Zitwer-agented Bruised Fruit by Gu Byeong-mo Specialist Korean agent Barbara J Zitwer has sold The Old Woman with the Knife by Gu Byeong-mo to Canongate for the UK & Commonwealth rights, and in a pre- empt to John Glyn at Hanover Square Press for North America. Chi young Kim, award winning translator of Please Look After Mom, The Good Son and The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly, is translating with publication planned for 2022. Rights have also gone to Ullstein in Germany and Decrecenzo in France. Emily Hayward Whitlock of The Artists Partnership is handling the film/TV rights and offers are on the table. According to Zitwer: 'Both an action/thriller and a solemn examination of aging, Bruised Fruit follows the story of Hornclaw, a sixty-five-year old female contract killer who is considering retirement. A fighter who has experienced loss and grief early on and lives in a state of self-imposed isolation, Hornclaw ends up revealing her vulnerabilities one day, causing a sequence of events where her past catches up with her. A meditation on loss, loneliness, and the ways grief shape individual lives, this book is particularly resonant, with its focus on a damaged woman surviving and thriving in a man's world.' The author is an award-winning YA writer and Bruised Fruit is her first adult fiction, originally published in Korea by Wisdomhouse in 2013. Pictured: Gu Byeong-mo at the Guadalajara International Book Fair