Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen, the hot book of autumn 2023, is now travelling to Turkey, where it will be published by Timas.
Steller’s sea cow continues to swim out into the world: the Turkish rights to Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen have been sold to Timas in a deal brought to us by our co-agents at Anatolia Agency.
Beasts of the Sea was the hot book of autumn 2023 and it quickly rose to fame as the most internationally successful debut from Finland ever. Its right were acquired in auctions, or with aggressive pre-empts, by some of the leading and largest publishers throughout the world.
The book centres around Steller’s sea cow, a sirenian creature lost forever to extinction in the 1800s. Approaching natural diversity through individual destinies, Beasts of the Sea is a story of great adventure, grand human ambitions and the urge to resurrect what humankind in its ignorance has destroyed. The novel is the winner of The Thank You for the Book Award, Finland’s booksellers’ prize, the best debut award, the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize, and a nominee for Finland’s biggest literary award, the Finlandia Prize, as well as for the Torch-bearer Prize. Its international breakthrough has been acknowledged for example by the Bookseller. In Finland, the book is published by Kustantamo S&S, a part of the Schildts & Söderströms publishing group.
Timas is a Turkish publishing house that has been striving to bring great Nordic literature to the Turkish audience for a while now: they are the home of our very own Thing That Fall From the Sky by Selja Ahava, now on its second reprint in Turkey, and the home of other Nordic contemporary voices of high caliber and great popularity like Alex Schulman and Lisa Ridzen from Sweden. Their beautiful editions and translations have earned them a solid reader base with the Turkish audience, and we trust that Beasts of the Sea is in amazing hands.
Congratulations to the publisher and the author!