Prix Goncourt winner ‘Watching Over Her’ to Atlantic

Joanna Lee, editor at Atlantic Fiction, acquired World English rights to Jean-Baptiste Andrea’s Prix Goncourt winning Watching Over Her/Veiller sur Elle. Rights were bought from Sophie Langlais at BAM, to be translated by Frank Wynne. Watching Over Her will be published in hardback in July 2025, with a paperback to follows.

Born in 1971, Jean-Baptiste Andrea is a writer, script-writer and French director, awarded the most prestigious literary prize in France in 2023, the Prix Goncourt, and the Prix du Roman Fnac, France’s premier bookseller prize. The first part of his professional career was devoted to cinema. He is the author of Ma Reine (2017), which won the Prix Femina des Lycéens and the prix du premier roman; Cent millions d’années et un jour (2019); Des diables et des saints (2021). Veiller sur elle was published in 2023 to great critical and commercial success, with 600,000 copies circulating in France. It is currently being translated into 26 languages. Andrea’s works are renowned for their narrative and emotional strengths. He tackles themes such as childhood, friendship, art, love and loss.

Watching Over Her is a sweeping love story across the class divide set against the backdrop of political turmoil in twentieth-century Italy, following Mimo, an impoverished sculptor and Viola, the wealthy daughter of a powerful family, who love and lose each other countless times over a lifetime.

Jean-Baptiste Andrea says,

‘I’m very excited to start a new journey with Atlantic, a venture which seems to be a perfect fit for what I’m trying to achieve: literature that doesn’t forget its primary purpose: storytelling. Storytelling has a magical function, and I’m trying to have, and share, a lot of fun when writing. This book was pretty special for me. All my books are, but for this one I wanted to fully share my vision of the world, that magic I perceive behind the fabric of life. I feared for a moment that nobody would understand a story which mixes friendship, love, history, religion, politics, art, and maybe a bit of magic. Apparently, I was wrong. Phew.’

Joanna Lee says,

‘I’m delighted to be publishing Watching Over Her, a hymn to friendship and freedom that has captivated over half a million readers in France already. This is a love story for the ages: full of heart, craft and a deep commitment to the power of art, one to sit alongside perennial favourites such as Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See and Julian Barnes’ The Man in the Red Coat. We’re thrilled to have the brilliant Frank Wynne on board to translate, and can’t wait for Watching Over Her to connect with readers across the world.’