The American rights to Herman Koch’s successful novel Het Diner have been sold at auction to US publishing house Hogarth for a record ‘six-figure sum’, Koch’s Dutch publisher Ambo Anthos said on Thursday.

Koch’s 2009 novel, a Dutch best-seller, has already been translated into 20 languages.
The American edition will be published in early 2013, just months after the English edition hits the bookshops, the Volkskrant says.

Het Diner is described as ‘a family drama with black edges’ and centres on ‘a sumptuous dinner for two brothers and their wives at a fashionable restaurant where they meet to discuss what to do about their fifteen-year-old sons, who are partners in crime.’