FLY ON THE WALL PRESS ACQUIRES MAEVE CLARKE'S ‘A HANDFUL OF NUTMEG’

Fly on the Wall Press has acquired worldwide rights to ‘A Handful of Nutmeg’, a powerful novel by award-winning writer Maeve Clarke, in a deal negotiated directly with the author by Managing Director Isabelle Kenyon.

The novel follows best friends Esther and Mercy, whose dreams of leaving Lagombo, Africa, to travel the world together, are curtailed when they, and their classmates, are kidnapped by boy soldiers. With the country engulfed in political unrest, and terrorist organisation Boko Haram gaining power, the girls are swept into a violent chain of events that forces them to flee in search of refuge in the UK. A story of survival, resilience and the abuse of male power, it is also a testament to the strength of female friendship in the face of overwhelming odds.

Maeve Clarke said: "As a publisher with a political and social conscience, Fly on the Wall Press feels like the natural home for my novel. I am beyond delighted that they are championing a book that looks at the story behind the headlines and about girls whose voices are rarely heard and then quickly forgotten."

Isabelle Kenyon, Managing Director of Fly on the Wall Press, said: "No one leaves this journey unscathed – let alone the reader. This novel honours the stories of captured girls – their childhoods stolen. But there is nuance and sensitivity here – perhaps the boys are victims, too. A haunting and evocative story that ultimately is about sisterhood that sustains beyond blood. This is a novel that will create empathy for refugees – Esther and Mercy, the bookish and the beautiful, will stay with you forever."

‘A Handful of Nutmeg’ is expected to publish in June 2027. This title won the 2024 SI Leeds Prize, taking both the Judges' Award and the Readers' Award, the first time this has been achieved since the prize's establishment. Maeve Clarke was the writer for the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

About Maeve Clarke

Maeve Clarke is a teacher and writer based in Birmingham, and is Writer in Residence for the Royal Literary Fund at the University of Worcester. She holds an MA in Novel Writing from the University of Manchester.

Her short fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies, including the award-winning Whispers in the Walls, in which she wrote the opening story, "Letters a Yard." Her debut novel, What Goes Round, was published by Tindal Street Press, and she won the Creative Futures Award for Flash Fiction with "Sewing Flowers."

Clarke also adapts contemporary novels for speakers of English as a Second Language for Penguin Random House and Oxford University Press, with adaptations of work by Malorie Blackman, Priscilla Mante and Yassmin Abdel-Magied. Her adaptation of Blackman's Boys Don't Cry won the LLL Award 2023.

She also writes for theatre, and was a Jerwood Mentee for Playwriting, mentored by Tim Crouch. She was shortlisted for Write Now with an early version of Between Two Worlds, and has been longlisted for the Mslexia and Bath Novel Awards.