Tanya Sweeney meets break-out fiction star Lara Prescott
Espionage and romance are the twin themes of Lara Prescott’s debut novel, a story based on how the CIA smuggled copies of Doctor Zhivago into the USSR at the height of the Cold War, writes Tanya Sweeney
Every so often, a book causes a bidding frenzy among publishers, turning its author into an overnight sensation. Last year, it was the turn of Lara Prescott, a former political consultant based in Texas. After a 12-publisher scrum, Prescott reportedly bagged herself a $2 million advance – something she readily admits was “life-changing”.
“I was in a state of shock for a month,” she recalls. “When it was going out to publishers, I ...