The Winner's Curse (34 page)

My first thanks for
The Winner’s Curse
goes to Vasiliki. I must also acknowledge several texts that kept me company while writing. Although the world I’ve presented in these pages is my own and has no concrete connection to the real world, I was inspired by antiquity, in particular the Greco-Roman period after Rome had conquered Greece and enslaved its population in the expected way of the time; slavery was a common consequence of war. Two books helped me think about the mentality of that period: Marguerite Yourcenar’s novel
Memoirs of Hadrian
and Thucydides’
The History of the Peloponnesian War
(which I paraphrase at one point). The poem that Kestrel reads in her library is very close to Ezra Pound’s opening of
Canto I
(which in turn echoes Homer’s
The Odyssey
): “And then went down to the ship, / Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea.”

So I give thanks to my reading … and to my readers. Many friends read and commented on
The Winner’s Curse.
Some read a chapter, others whole sections, and others multiple drafts. Thank you: Genn Albin, Marianna Baer, Betsy Bird, Elise Broach, Donna Freitas, Daphne Grab, Mordicai Knode, Kekla Magoon, Caragh O’Brien, Jill Santopolo, Eliot Schrefer, Natalie Van Unen, and Robin Wasserman. Your advice has been indispensable.

Thanks also to those who have discussed this project with me, and offered ideas or moral support (often both!): Kristin Cashore, Jenny Knode, Thomas Philippon, and Robert Rutkoski (who came up with the phrase “the code of the call”). Nicole Cliffe, Denise Klein, Kate Moncrief, and Ivan Werning had really useful things to say about horses. David Verchere, as usual, was my go-to expert on ships and sailing. Tiffany Werth, Georgi McCarthy, and many Facebook friends chimed in on questions about language.

I have two small, sweet sons, and couldn’t have written this book without help taking care of them. Thanks to my parents, in-laws, and babysitters: Monica Ciucurel, Shaida Khan, Georgi McCarthy, Nora Meguetaoui, Christiane and Jean-Claude Philippon, and Marilyn and Robert Rutkoski.

I’m very grateful to those who look out for me. My wise and warm agent, Charlotte Sheedy, and her team: Mackenzie Brady, Carly Croll, and Joan Rosen. My insightful editor, Janine O’Malley, who makes every book so much better. Simon Boughton, for valuing details. Joy Peskin, for being such a wonderful advocate. Everybody else at FSG and Macmillan, for their verve and delight in bringing books into this world, especially Elizabeth Clark, Gina Gagliano, Angus Killick, Kate Leid, Kathryn Little, Karen Ninnis, Karla Reganold, Caitlin Sweeny, Allison Verost, Ksenia Winnicki, and Jon Yaged. Thank you.

ALSO BY MARIE RUTKOSKI

The Cabinet of Wonders

The Celestial Globe

The Jewel of the Kalderash

The Shadow Society

Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers

175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010

Text copyright © 2014 by Marie Rutkoski

All rights reserved

First hardcover edition, 2014

eBook edition, March 2014

macteenbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Rutkoski, Marie.

    The winner’s curse / Marie Rutkoski. — First edition.

        pages cm — (The winner’s trilogy; book 1)

    Summary: An aristocratic girl who is a member of a warmongering and enslaving empire purchases a slave, an act that sets in motion a rebellion that might overthrow her world as well as her heart.

    ISBN 978-0-374-38467-8 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-0-374-38468-5 (ebook)

    [1.  Slavery—Fiction.   2.  Love—Fiction.]   I.  Title.

PZ7.R935Wi 2014

[Fic]—dc23

2013000312

eISBN 9780374384685