W.W. Norton announced plans to publish Norse Mythology, a new book by acclaimed bestselling novelist and comics writer Neil Gaiman that will be released in February 2017 in hardcover and as an e-book.

Gaiman’s Norse Mythology will be a retelling of the Norse myths inspired by his reading of different versions of the stories as well as reading the tales as a child. Gaiman said he first read the stories when he was a small boy “with a borrowed paperback in a friends bedroom, but I was also walking with Thor and Loki through a pine forest, on their way to be made fools of by the crafty Ice Giants. I hope that I have retold stories that read like the real thing: sometimes profound, sometimes funny, sometimes heroic, sometimes dark, and always inevitable.”

World rights (all languages), first serial, and audio rights were acquired by W.W. Norton v-p, senior editor Amy Cherry. Gaiman is represented by Merrilee Heifetz of the Writers House Literary Agency.

Cherry said, “Neil Gaiman is a mythic writer in all senses of the word. In Norse Mythology, he performs the high-wire act of giving us the power, magic, and comic wit of these tales while creating an immensely satisfying narrative that reads almost like a novel.”