Rights & Collaboration
The Song of Inanna is a small independent team of women creators. We write original, female-led long-form fiction told from women's points of view, and carry it on into illustrated audiobooks and film.
What we have
- Seven original novels, each with a woman at its centre, ranging across historical fiction, science fiction and urban fantasy
- Six are complete, and the Chinese originals and full English and Japanese translations are all published on this site, free to read
- Every finished novel has a complete illustrated audiobook; Death of a Gladiatrix also has a feature-length film of about an hour, made by one person
- Twenty-two research notes on women in history, in all three languages, which form the groundwork for the fiction (see Research)
The novels
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Death of a Gladiatrix
In Trajan's Rome, the senator's daughter Aelia picks a gladiatrix from the North Sea out of a gladiator school to guard her on a long journey. When her betrothed, a Roman legion commander, dies on the road, the city needs someone to blame, and Aelia can only sit in the stands and watch the one person who understood her fight for nine days running.
- Comparable titles
- Gladiator meets Rome (HBO), but this time the story is told from the stands, not the sand.
- Highlights
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- A trial rewrites the truth as a hero's legend: the same city raises a statue to the dead commander and cheers an execution in the arena
- Two women dealt with by the same imperial order: one handed over to her family’s “supervision”, the other sent out onto the sand
- Available now
- Feature-length one-person film (about 1 h); illustrated audiobook, full series (about 3 h 15 min); Chinese original; full English and Japanese translations
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Do Not Question
Office worker Anna wakes up in the year 3018, where the AI Vector makes every decision for humanity: lunch portions are set by gender, and even a silent grumble costs you performance points. With Xia, the only colleague who dares to question the system out loud, she actually brings Vector to a halt, and that is when the trouble starts.
- Comparable titles
- Severance meets Black Mirror, played as black comedy.
- Highlights
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- Performance reviews, rationed lunches, mood scores and rules that are “for your own good”: every office worker will recognise them
- The hard part isn't toppling the machine but what comes after: with Vector offline, the neighbourhood committee aunties rebuild order with paper, pens and a megaphone, starting with who gets the football pitch
- Available now
- Three trailers; illustrated audiobook, full series (about 1 h 53 min); Chinese original; full English and Japanese translations
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Before the Goliath Sinks
A star cartographer whose people lost their home inherits her mother’s “unsinkable” starship, only to be pressed into service as navigator by the conquerors and sent towards the one place that can sink it: the Silent Sea, which appears once in a thousand years and has never let anyone come back. The only one aboard who is kind to her is a linguist who has never seen her own people’s home either.
- Comparable titles
- Arrival: here too a linguist decodes messages from the unknown, except that every message comes from a civilisation long extinct.
- Highlights
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- The closer the ship gets to the Silent Sea, the denser the signals become, and the mystery tightens act by act
- What a mother passes to her daughter is more than a ship
- Available now
- Three trailers, one per act; illustrated audiobook, full series (about 55 min); Chinese original; full English and Japanese translations
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Bread and Roses
South Wales, 1910. Isabel, a mine-owner’s daughter, comes home to the coalfield as a teacher and finds her father’s name in the foreman’s ledger of docked wages. After a second collapse, when her father orders the news shut down and “the equipment saved first”, she goes down the pit herself, leading women who are said to bring the mine bad luck.
- Comparable titles
- North and South meets Pride: an industrial town, a gulf between classes, and the friendship between women.
- Highlights
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- A heroine standing in the crack between classes: her surname can get a fine struck off, and it can also be used to keep her quiet
- White ballroom gloves against the coal dust of the screening shed: two worlds in sharp visual contrast
- From a mine rescue all the way to a real march in British history
- Available now
- Illustrated audiobook, full series (about 2 h 43 min); Chinese original; full English and Japanese translations
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Western Story
1875. Anna, a rancher’s daughter who lost her mother young, rides out with her father’s herd on the cattle drive. The best hand in the outfit is a woman passing as a man, and from the moment Anna keeps her secret, she begins to see a life beyond her father’s gate.
- Comparable titles
- A girl’s Western in the vein of True Grit, except that what waits for her in the wilderness is not revenge but a choice.
- Highlights
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- Storms, lightning, wolves and dry gulches: every visual element of the Western
- The cowboy in disguise is drawn from real history; four research notes on the site cover the background
- Told in the second person: the reader is Anna
- Available now
- Illustrated audiobook, full series (about 2 h 50 min); Chinese original; full English and Japanese translations
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Where She Goes
AD 632. As the Sasanian dynasty totters, the twenty-year-old daughter of a Grand Scribe carries a golden seal that counts for less with every mile, travelling east with an envoy’s caravan full of private agendas, across quicksand and the Pamirs, towards Tang Chang’an.
- Comparable titles
- The Chang’an of The Longest Day in Chang’an and the Silk Road of Inoue Yasushi’s Tun-huang, seen this time through the eyes of a Persian woman.
- Highlights
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- A complete map of the Silk Road: Ctesiphon, Samarkand, the Pamirs, Dunhuang, Chang’an, each with a new language and new rules
- The twilight of one empire meets the golden age of another on a single journey
- Available now
- Illustrated audiobook, full series (about 2 h 40 min); Chinese original; full English and Japanese translations
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Against the Current
Feverish and working late, Xu Jiayi books a ride from a car nobody can account for. The moment before she gets in, a delivery rider going the wrong way knocks her into a puddle. The car drives off, leaving a burning pain on her wrist, and the rider, who insists the accident was all her own fault, turns up at Jiayi’s door every day from then on.
- Comparable titles
- An urban ghost story in the spirit of Natsume’s Book of Friends: the uncanny keeps deepening, but at heart it is about the ties between people.
- Highlights
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- Overtime, shared flats, ride-hailing apps and community canteens: a life any young city dweller will recognise
- The suspense keeps building, but the real question is when to stay and when to let go
- Available now
- First trailer; the video version is released act by act; Chinese original; English and Japanese translations follow each act
These introductions stop at the opening of each story and leave the endings out, so as not to spoil them for readers. For a full synopsis including the ending, please write to us.
What we are open to
- Film, television and animation adaptation
- Publishing: print, ebook and audiobook
- Translation and international rights
- Investment in, or incubation of, the team or a single title
Originality
The texts, characters and settings of all the novels are the team's own original work. How we use AI tools in our process is set out on the Vision page.
The English and Japanese translations are made with AI tools; the Chinese original is the definitive text. See About the translations for how they are made.
Get in touch
Please write to the address on our About page, with "Collaboration" and the title you are interested in in the subject line.