Harvill Secker acquires new political thriller from A D Miller

Liz Foley, Publishing Director at Harvill Secker, has acquired UK & Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) to Independence Square by A.D Miller, from Zoë Waldie at Rogers, Coleridge and White.  It will be published by Harvill Secker in February 2020.

A young woman scrambles up the icy hill above Independence Square in Kiev, desperate to avert the bloody crackdown that threatens the protesters below. The outcome of a revolution, and her brother’s safety, depend on her.  Though neither of them realise it, so does the fate of the man she is frantic to see.

A decade later, Simon Davey, a disgraced British diplomat, follows Olesya Zarchenko into the Tube in London, convinced she was responsible for his ruin. When he tracks her to a riverside mansion he begins to see that Olesya’s life has not been what he thought it was, and neither has his own.

Independence Square is the story of a man struggling to understand his past and of a country striving to escape its history. It is about grand upheavals of state, agonising affairs of the heart and how they intersect.  It is also a story of how we live now: about thwarted idealism, money and corruption, and where, in the 21st century, power really lies.

Liz Foley, Publishing Director at Harvill Secker, says: ‘At Harvill Secker we’ve long admired A.D. Miller’s work and his command of pace, character and theme in Independence Square makes it both an utterly compelling and deeply thought-provoking read. It is a novel that illuminates both personal and political relationships and reflects powerfully on the world we are living in now. We are over the moon to welcome such an exceptional writer to the Harvill Secker list.’  

A.D. Miller says: Since my time as a foreign correspondent, I've wanted to set a novel during a revolution--with all the vertigo and hope, wild gambles and urgent moral choices that are involved. "Independence Square" is a story about people caught up in that euphoria, and in its aftermath. I'm thrilled to be telling it with Liz Foley and her great team at Harvill Secker, and to be joining their fantastic, worldly list.  

A.D. Miller studied literature at Cambridge and Princeton. His first novel, Snowdrops — a study in moral degradation set in modern Russia — was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, the James Tait Black Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, the CWA Gold Dagger and the Galaxy National Book Awards; it has been translated into 25 languages. As Moscow Correspondent of The Economist he travelled widely across the former Soviet Union and covered the Orange Revolution in Ukraine; he is now the magazine’s Culture Editor and is based in London.

For more information contact:

Bethan Jones, Head of Publicity, Vintage

Tel: 020 7840 8543 / email: bjones@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk