Top US agent hired to new Frame book

A top American literary agent has been hired to negotiate global sales of Janet Frame's new novel.

Towards Another Summer will be published posthumously by Random House in New Zealand in October.

Frame wrote the book in 1963 when she was living in London and feeling homesick for New Zealand. It was not published during her lifetime because it is partly autobiographical and she felt it was too personal.

It will be the second Frame book, after Montana Book Awards poetry category winner The Goose Bath, to be published posthumously.

New York- based literary agent Andrew Wylie, who represents top writers, including Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis, was hired in January by the Janet Frame Literary Estate to sell her latest book, and other previously published work, internationally.

Frame's niece and literary executor, Pamela Gordon, said Mr Wylie was delighted to represent Frame, who is one of New Zealand's most distinguished writers and was a nominee for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003.

She had been told Mr Wylie was the best agent in the business. "You don't have to aggressively sell Janet Frame. He's a high- quality agent and he only deals with high-quality people, but he does try to get the best publishing contracts for them."

Mr Wylie has already sold Towards Another Summer to publishing companies in Australia and Britain. Set in Britain, the story was a mixture of fiction and autobiographical reminiscences of Frame's childhood, Ms Gordon said.

- © Fairfax NZ News