Press release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Toronto; November 8, 2018)

Kate Cassaday, executive editor at HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, has acquired ­­­English-language rights in Canada to a memoir by international speaker and human rights activist Samra Zafar. Zafar’s book, A Good Wife, will be published in spring 2019. Cassaday said of the acquisition, “From the first moment I met Samra, I knew that I wanted to share her powerful story. Every page of this important memoir is guided by Samra’s strength and humanity.”

At fifteen, Samra Zafar had big dreams. She was going to go to university and forge her own path. Then, with almost no warning, those dreams were snatched away from her. She was suddenly married to a stranger at seventeen and had to leave behind her family in Pakistan to move to Canada. Her new husband and his family promised that the marriage and the move would be a fulfillment of her dreams, not a betrayal of them. But as the walls of their home slowly became a prison, Samra realized the promises were empty ones.

Desperate to get out and refusing to give up, Samra hatched an escape plan for herself and her two daughters. Somehow, she found the strength not only to build a new future but to walk away from her past, ignoring the pleas of her family and risking cultural isolation by divorcing her husband.

A Good Wife tells the harrowing and inspiring story of a young girl with big dreams, becoming a woman who has found strength in the face of oppression and battled through to empowerment. Samra said of the decision to share her story, “I decided to speak up because I knew my story is not just mine. I hope that by raising my voice, I will help others find their voices. I’m grateful to the wonderful team at Transatlantic Agency and HarperCollins for making that happen!”

Samra’s personal essay on her marriage, published in Toronto Life magazine, went viral in 2017, and her piece on Yahoo! News has been viewed more than 12 million times worldwide. She is an international speaker, social entrepreneur, scholar, author, and human rights activist, connecting with people around the world and empowering others through her advocacy and non-profit work. She also serves as a governor for the University of Toronto. Samra’s free time is dedicated to her two beautiful daughters.

Samra Zafar’s book deal was brokered by Samantha Haywood, literary agent and president of Transatlantic Agency, and Stephanie Sinclair, senior agent.

About HarperCollins Publishers

HarperCollins in Canada:

Known worldwide for the quality of its list, HarperCollinsCanada is the proud home of many bestselling authors, including Esi Edugyan, Heather O’Neill, Lawrence Hill, Kamal Al-Solaylee, Mark Sakamoto, Ayelet Tsabari, Emily St. John Mandel, Tracey Lindberg, Tara Westover, Hilary Mantel, Rachel Cusk, Anthony Horowitz, Uzma Jalaluddin, Kim Fu, Carrianne Leung, Ellen Keith, Jael Richardson, Emma Donoghue, Helen Humphreys, and Thomas King, among many more found at harpercollins.ca.

HarperCollins Publishers is the second-largest consumer book publisher in the world, with operations in 18 countries. With 200 years of history and more than 120 branded imprints around the world, HarperCollins publishes approximately 10,000 new books every year in 17 languages and has a print and digital catalogue of more than 200,000 titles. Writing across dozens of genres, HarperCollins authors include winners of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the RBC Taylor Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the National Book Award, the Newbery and Caldecott Medals, and the Man Booker Prize. HarperCollins, headquartered in New York, is a subsidiary of News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) and can be visited online at corporate.HC.com.