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Viking/ Penguin’s Elizabeth Gilbert To Publish a New Memoir With Viking

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Eat, Pray, Love, will have a new memoir out from Viking in January 2010. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage begins where Eat, Pray, Love ended—just after Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who’d been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. (Both were survivors of divorces.) But providence intervened one day in the form of the U.S. government, which—after unexpectedly detaining Felipe at an American border crossing—gave the couple a choice: they could either get married, or Felipe would never be allowed to enter the country again.

Having been effectively sentenced to wed, Gilbert and Felipe spent the next ten months wandering haphazardly across Southeast Asia waiting for the U.S. government to permit them to return. During this time, she tackled her fears of marriage by studying it intensely, trying with all her might to discover through historical research, interviews, and personal reflection what this stubbornly enduring old institution actually is. Committed tells the story of one woman’s efforts to make peace with marriage before she enters its estate once more. Told with Gilbert’s trademark wit, intelligence and compassion, the book attempts to “turn on all the lights” when it comes to matrimony by frankly examining questions of compatibility, infatuation, fidelity, tradition, economic realities, divorce risks and social expectations. Myths are debunked; fears are unthreaded; historical perspective is found; and romantic fantasies are ultimately exchanged for vital emotional compromises. In the end, Gilbert’s memoir is a clear-eyed celebration of the complexity and consequence that real love, in the real world, actually entails.

Since its initial publication in January 2006, Eat, Pray, Love has spent 57 weeks in the #1 spot on the New York Times trade paperback bestseller list and 135 weeks on the list overall in hardcover and paperback. It has shipped over 6 million copies in both hardcover and paperback in the U.S. and has been published in over thirty languages.

Also, filming has just commenced on Columbia Pictures' adaptation of Eat, Pray, Love, with an all star cast: Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, James Franco, Billy Crudup, Richard Jenkins and Viola Davis. Ryan Murphy is directing, Brad Pitt and Dede Gardner of Plan B and Rod Om Films are producing. The film is tentatively scheduled for release next summer.