Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé, a 21 year old author, has landed a million-dollar book deal in the US for her debut novel Ace of Spades.

The south London based student’s high school thriller, published next June, tackles institutional racism, following two black students as they try to find out who’s spreading rumours about them at their elite private school. She began writing the novel in her first year of university in Aberdeen, where she studied English, Chinese and anthropology, before landing an agent and a UK book deal with Usborne in 2018, before going on to work with her editor for two years, resulting in a two-book deal with Macmillan. Speaking to The Guardian, Àbíké-Íyímídé, who says she was ‘just a broke student writing to make myself some fictional friends’ claimed ‘Macmillan put their money where their mouth is. Often in publishing, a lot of black authors don’t get the support so it was just so lovely to see them not lowball me. They wanted to show they were invested and I really appreciated that’.