With the London Book Fair imminent, the Telegraph site has recruited a literary scout, Anne Louise Fisher, to write about what the fair is like for her and her colleagues. “Our greatest fear is that we will hear about a book for the first time at the book fair with no time to read it. It happens, and often it is a foreign book such as Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky, the sensation of the 2004 Frankfurt Book Fair, with the result that the scouts had to rush around getting a copy of the French typescript, reading and then photocopying (at enormous expense). We can’t recommend that our publishers buy a book if we haven’t read it first.” (As it happens, Suite Française will be published in Canada next month by Knopf Canada.)

Related links:
Click here for the Telegraph story
Click here for a June 2005 Q&Q story on literary scouts