The little-known Scottish author taking China by storm with her Ferryman novels

If you have not been paying attention to China’s bestseller lists, you would be forgiven for not being familiar with Claire McFall’s name. If you had, you would know two McFall novels are placed squarely in the Top 10. One, Ferryman (2013), has been a near-permanent fixture for more than two years. That’s right: two years, selling more than a million copies in the process. That’s right: one million copies. Ferryman has received more than 500,000 reviews on Chinese electronic-commerce platform Dangdang alone. 

McFall’s debut has now been joined in the Top 10 by a sequel, Trespassers (2017), which has proved a more immediate hit than its predecessor. Both books narrate the strange adventures of a Scottish teenager, Dylan, and her otherworldly other half, Tristan. Part two expands this romance to include Tristan’s unrequited lover, Susanna, and Jack, a surly young tearaway. 

And just when it seemed that McFall’s star couldn’t rise much higher, in China at least, news has just been announced of a film deal with American media company Legendary Entertainment, which has produced blockbusters such as Batman Begins (2005) and Inception (2010) and is a subsidiary of Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda. 

What makes McFall’s story more intriguing than the usual rags-to-riches tale is the contrast between the writer’s vast success everywhere from Hong Kong to Shanghai and her near-anonymity in her homeland. Ferryman may have been nominated for several awards in Scotland, but its author is far from being a household name. 

Proving this point, I talk to McFall soon after she returns from a semi-disastrous reading of Trespassers at a local school.  “They weren’t ready for me, so nothing was organised,” she says. “I had to use my own laptop, and then they broke it. They jammed a sound cable into my headphone jack. I wasn’t very happy.” The reading itself was staged on the school’s main thoroughfare, which meant delays while “1,000 kids walked past and gawped and chucked pencils down from the library. It was a bit awful. I drove four hours to do a rubbish talk”. 

That McFall greets these trials with a measure of good grace might have something to do with her day job teaching English, which she still does part time. Indeed, she sounds angrier on the school’s behalf than at them.  “Schools are struggling just now because no one has got any money. The Scottish Book Trust has a Live Literature fund, which pays half the author’s fees and expenses. That is the only way most schools can get authors in.”