Niffenegger Close to New Deal

The hotly contested auction for Audrey Niffenegger’s new novel is nearing a conclusion, with several houses still bidding for U.S. rights; bids are rumored to have reached well into seven figures. The novel, titled Her Fearful Symmetry, is described as a 21^st-century ghost story and centers on two American teenagers, identical twins, whose lives change when an aunt whom they didn’t know dies and leaves them a flat overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London. Feeling that their lives can finally begin, the twins have no idea that they’ve been summoned into a tangle of fraying lives, including that of their dead aunt herself, who never got over her estrangement from the twins’ mother, and in fact can’t seem to leave the flat.

Niffenegger’s 2003 debut, The Time Traveler’s Wife, was a smash hit for indie house Macadam/Cage, which last fall acknowledged amid staff cuts that it had halted acquisitions for the foreseeable future. “We’re starting fresh,” said Niffenegger’s agent Joe Regal. “It’s a challenging situation.” Rights to the new novel have already sold to Niffenegger’s preexisting publishers in the U.K. (Jonathan Cape), Canada, Germany, Holland and Israel. Given Niffenegger’s close relationship with these publishers, some of these deals were made over a year ago on the strength of a partial manuscript; the U.S. deal is happening now because Niffenegger has finally completed the book.