“ Sara, you are one of the most gifted writers I’ve ever had the great luck to work with, with a voice that refuses any categorisation. It sings from the page, drawing a protagonist who is never confined to the role of victim, but breaks free and creates a history on her own terms . ”

— Katy Loftus, Viking/Penguin editor

The buzz was palpable at the book launch for The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Jamaican-born author Sara Collins, which was held at Hatchards bookshop in Piccadilly, London, on April 9; with a cocktail reception immediately following at Brown’s Hotel. The novel was published by Penguin Random House, in the UK on April 4 and is due to be published in the USA and Canada on May 21 by Harper Collins. The book tells the story of Frannie Langton, a young Jamaican woman brought to London in the early 19th century and accused of the murder of her employer and his wife, and has received glowing reviews from The Guardian (“a stunning debut”) and The Time s (“a star in the making”). Rights have been sold to an additional 12 territories for translation, including Spain, France, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands, and TV rights were sold to UK-based production company Drama Republic in a deal announced on April 11.

The launch was attended by friends and family, authors and industry professionals. Collins, who left Jamaica at the age of four and grew up in Grand Cayman, highlighted the challenges of getting a book published: “I grew up on an island so small that it didn’t show up on many maps. The message we got there was that people who came from places like that didn’t do things like this. Small islands were supposed to give you small ambitions. But reading brought the world within my reach. Reading showed me that your ambition can outweigh your reality.“

Collins’s agent, Nelle Andrew, said: “I hope that with voices like Frannie, people out there who maybe haven’t seen themselves in stories before will no longer feel the need to mould themselves to reflect the world but be like Sara Collins and demand the world to recognise and welcome them into the narratives that exist already. I hope that with authors like Sara Collins, other young girls and women, who before may not have felt they could touch pre-established codes, will realise their input is just as valuable and that these codes are meant to evolve not to petrify like wood.”

Collins studied law at the London School of Economics (LSE) and worked as a lawyer for 17 years. In 2014 she embarked upon a Master’s in Creative Writing at Cambridge University, where she was the recipient of the Michael Holroyd Prize, and shortlisted for the Lucy Cavendish prize.