Sama Helalli’s debut novel, Operación Kerman (Operation Kerman) will be published by Roca Editorial/PRH in the original Spanish on February 27th 2025. The author currently resides in France, but she was born in Syria and moved to Spain at the age of 3 with her parents. The novel had been previously launched as an audiobook by Audible in January 2024 (with very positive reviews) and Audiovisual rights were snapped up by a UK producer, details to be announced soon. All translation rights are currently available.
Copies are in from the press and they look stunning. Here is the full jacket:
Operación Kerman (Operation Kerman) is a women-led action novel, which tells the story of Vera and Cloe, two friends who are tired of seeing their dreams, their work and their pride trampled by the wealthiest in society. They decide to take matters into their own hands and rob unscrupulous millionaires as a sideline job. However, despite the apparent success of their latest heist, a call catches them by surprise a few days later: it is Gladys, the wife of the robbery victim, who announces that she knows what they have done. But, far from handing them over to the police or demanding the return of what was stolen, she makes them an unusual job offer: track down an exceptional 18th-century Persian carpet valued at 4 million dollars belonging to her family which has been stolen from a museum. She tells them the story of Della, a teenaged girl and weaver of unmatched talent, who lived in the Iranian city of Kerman, famous for its carpets. The carpet holds immense sentimental value for Gladys' family and she fears it will now be sold on the black market.
Cloe and Vera accept the job, thus setting in motion a daring plan to infiltrate the shadowy world of the black market and retrieve the artifact. As they dive headfirst into the high-stakes mission, they find themselves in a luxurious Parisian mansion, training alongside a remarkable team. In the company of Sofia, a brilliant but amnesiac former hacker, and the versatile assistants Jean-Luc and Adrien, the duo undergoes a series of challenges, which take them from Paris to the south of France, Monaco, Russia and Iran. Their ultimate goal? To successfully reclaim the stolen rug and unravel a web of secrets that leads them into the heart of cutting-edge international intelligence agencies. They just have to learn how to fire a gun first...
Sama Helalli studied Translation and Interpretation in English and Arabic at the University of Alicante. Even though she later completed her master’s in International Business, her Syrian roots led her towards other goals and projects. After completing her degree as an Intercultural Mediator, the political situation in the Middle East, more specifically in Syria, brought her to receive training in areas of international security and intelligence. She then started an investigation centered on terrorist groups, their recruitment strategies, and their forms of organization, and presented her conclusions in various seminars for members of the Spanish security corps and other international services. She currently lives in France.
For more information about the above title, please contact Carolina Martínez (carolina@pontas-agency.com).