Everyone wants to publish debut novelist's Cold War thriller

How’s this for a debut — Lara Prescott’s first novel has now been sold to twenty-eight territories (including Russia) and one film-production pair, according to The Bookseller.

We Were Never Here is a thriller that describes how the CIA smuggled copies of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago into Russia during the Cold War.

It inspired fierce bidding wars when Prescott’s agent started shopping it around in May, The Guardian reported earlier this year.

Marc Platt Productions, which produced La La Land, is teaming up with The Ink Factory to adapt the novel for the screen.

We Were Never Here is expected to be released in fall 2019.

Prescott, who recently concluded a three-year creative writing fellowship at the University of Texas, has previously been published in The Southern Review, The Hudson Review, and Crazyhorse, among other places.