There's usually one book, often a novel, on which word spreads like wildfire at the Frankfurt fair, and this time it was Deafening, a first novel by Canadian poet and short story writer Frances Itani. It's about a stone-deaf woman early in the century and her hearing husband, her mainstay, who leaves her to serve in World War I. It alternates between her world of silence at home and the horrendous carnage he lives through as a battlefield medic; it's being compared to the work of Pat Barker and Ian McEwan. The buyer here, from Jackie Kaiser at Westwood Creative in Toronto, was Elisabeth Schmitz at Grove Atlantic, who paid one of the house's largest advances ever for world English rights (except Canada), and another six-figure sum was shelled out by Carolyn Mays at Hodder in the U.K. Dutch publisher Bruna won it at auction in Frankfurt, and offers are already in from Germany and Brazil.