The New York Times is reporting that Audrey Niffenegger‘s second novel, Her Fearful Symmetry, sold to Scribner (a division of Simon & Schuster), for nearly $5 million after a “fiercely contested auction” conducted by agent Joseph Regal. The book, according to the Times, is “a supernatural story about twins who inherit an apartment near a London cemetery and become embroiled in the lives of the building’s other residents and the ghost of their aunt, who left them the flat.” Scribner, and Jonathan Cape in the UK, have the book scheduled for September publication.
Scriber’s Vice President and Editor in Chief Nan Graham said she’s not worried about the sophomore novel curse, noting that Niffenegger sold this book as a completed manuscript. “She really has defied custom and written a spectacular second novel, which is one of the hardest things to do in this universe. She’s not selling it essentially on the success of her first book.”
Niffenegger’s first novel, The Time Traveler’s Wife, was published six years ago by San Francisco-based independent publisher MacAdam/Cage, which managed to turn it into a bestseller (the hardcover sold more than 110,000 copies, and the paperback—published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Harvest imprint—sold more than 1.25 million copies). The film adaptation of that book, directed by Robert Schwentke and starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana, is scheduled for release in February 2010.
Niffenegger is a visual artist who is also a faculty member at Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts.