Millionaire at 26 – London's hottest debut author

Jessica George's novel, Maame, sold for seven figures, is already a New York Times bestseller and is being turned into a TV series set in London. Katie Strick meets her

- Katie Strick

JUST over 18 months ago, Jessica George went to bed a regular 26-year-old publishing assistant in a flatshare in Wandsworth, and woke up the next day a millionaire.

"You have to remember: this is the story I didn't think would go anywhere," the British-Ghanaian first-time author tells me repeatedly as we meet to discuss her new book, Maame (pronounced "ma-meh"), which is finally published in the UK tomorrow after long being tipped as the biggest debut novel of 2023 (it launched in the US last month and is already storming bestseller lists). After five failed book attempts over the course of her early twenties, George says Maame - a fictional story of grief, identity and female friendships inspired by her experience of caring for her father, who had Parkinson's disease - was the one she never expected to take off.

What a good thing that George decided to switch from superheroes and murder mysteries to writing a story closer to home. A year after she started writing Maame, in summer 2021, George was offered a two-book deal with publishers Hodder & Stoughton after an (almost-unheard-of-in-the-industry) eight-way auction. It was exactly the pinch-herself moment the now 28-year-old had been dreaming of for years - and, as it turned out, just the beginning of a chain of pinch-herself moments.

Among them: a seven-figure advance deal from a US publisher (also for two books), plans for a film adaptation with Universal Studios, and rave reviews from award-winning author Celeste Ng to the Washington Post. "A quarter-life crisis handled with grace and guts" is how the New York Times described George's novel, currently at number five on its hardcover fiction bestseller list.