Filippo Bernardini, a 29-year-old Italian, confessed in a New York court to impersonating others in the theft of more than 1,000 manuscripts.
Bernardini worked in London for the American publisher Simon & Schuster. He used the knowledge he acquired in the publishing world to get his hands on unpublished manuscripts by known and unknown authors from August 2016 to January 2021.
He targeted big names like Ian McEwan, Sally Rooney, Jennifer Egan and Stieg Larsson.
Among the hundreds of victims are Dutch writer Hanna Bervoets, bestselling author Margaret Atwood and actor Ethan Hawke. But he has also set his sights on Icelandic tales, and in our linguistic area: on the short story The bet by Saskia De Coster and op What we have seenthe 2021 Book Week gift, written by Hanna Bervoets.
The man used fake email addresses to pose as a publisher and literary agent, among others. The theft only stopped when he was arrested at a New York airport in January of last year.
Bernardini could be sentenced to 20 years in prison. The court will announce his sentence on April 5.
