Mariner Unveils Feminist Retelling of '1984'
Mariner Books, now part of the William Morrow group at HarperCollins (after HC bought Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), has acquired a feminist retelling of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Julia by Sandra Newman (The Heavens) is authorized by the Orwell estate and is, Mariner said, "told from the point of view of Winston Smith’s lover, Julia." (Smith is the everyman protagonist of Orwell's novel, whose job is to rewrite historical documents for the ruling totalitarian government.) The new novel, the publisher went on, "depicts the same events as Nineteen Eighty-Four, only this time as seen through Julia’s eyes."
Elaborating on the novel, Bill Hamilton, literary executor of the Orwell estate said Julia "is both true to the original but also gives a dramatically different narrative to stand alongside the original."
The novel was acquired in a North American rights agreement by Peter Hubbard from Victoria Hobbs at A.M. Heath.
