The Bookseller magazine
Ad Lib bags Hardy's 'vivid' family history
MAR 27, 2023 BY KATIE FRASER
Ad Lib has bagged The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis, a "meticulously-researched" family history by Felice Hardy.
Editorial director Duncan Proudfoot acquired world all language rights from Neil Hennessy-Vass at Xavicus Media. The book will be published on 3rd July 2023.
The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis follows Liesl Herbst, her husband David and their daughter Dorli, who escaped Europe on the brink of war and their relatives who remained. The publisher continued: "In 1930, at the age of 26, Liesl Herbst, Austrian national tennis champion and a celebrity in Vienna fled to Britain after escaping from the Nazis. In London, having already been stripped of their Austrian citizenship and rendered stateless aliens, both Liesl and her daughter Dorli competed at Wimbledon." Hardy is Herbst’s granddaughter.
Proudfoot commented: "Felice’s family story is an extraordinary one of great resilience in the face of irresistible forces. Felice tells it with great skill, both vividly and movingly."
Hardy added: "I was raised in an emotionally-ravaged family who suffered from survivor’s guilt. The story is based around my grandparents’ dramatic escape, along with my mother, to London from Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1939. My grandmother was the 1930 Austrian tennis champion and later beat Tim Henman’s grandmother to qualify for Wimbledon. She and my mother also played doubles together at Wimbledon, the only mother and daughter ever to do so."
