Writer Alexander McCall Smith – creator of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency mysteries – is working on a contemporary adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma for HarperFiction’s Austen Project.
“Writing a contemporary version of Emma is both a privilege and a real challenge,” the author said. “Not only is Emma one of the finest novels in the English language, but it is possibly Jane Austen’s most thought-provoking and interesting book.”
According to HarperFiction,
The Austen Project pairs six bestselling contemporary authors with Jane Austen’s six complete works: Sense & Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Pride & Prejudice, Emma, Persuasion and Mansfield Park. Taking these well-loved stories as their base, each author will write their own unique take on Jane Austen’s novels.
The first two “reimagined” Austen works will be Sense & Sensibility (updated by Joanna Trollope) and Northanger Abbey (rewritten by Val McDermid). McCall Smith’s Emma drops in Spring of 2014, about a year and a half short of its 200th publication anniversary.