EXCLUSIVE: Sir Ronald Harwood, writer of Oscar-winner The Pianist, in talks to script film for The Ink Factory.

UK and US production outfit The Ink Factory has signed a deal for the film rights to Thomas Harding’s Second World War book Hanns and Rudolf: The German Jew and the Hunt for the Kommandant of Auschwitz, about the young Jewish soldier who tracked down and arrested Nazi Rudolf Hoss.

The company is now in talks with The Pianist writer Sir Ronald Harwood to adapt the true story, which is currently non-fiction Book of the Month for May in Waterstones.

Ink Factory co-founder Simon Cornwell agreed the rights deal with film agents Nick Marston and Camilla Young at Curtis Brown, acting on behalf of Patrick Walsh at Conville & Walsh.

Hanns and Rudolf, previously shortlisted for the biography section of the Costa prize, charts the twin lives from childhood of Rudolf Höss and Hanns Alexander, respectively the Kommandant of Auschwitz and a young Jewish soldier who, after the war, tracked down and arrested Höss where he was hiding on a farm in Northern Germany.

The book has to date sold into ten foreign languages and to Simon & Schuster in the States and to Anansi in Canada. Windmill published in the UK.

The Ink Factory, whose producers Stephen and Simon Cornwell are sons of celebrated novelist John Le Carré, are currently in production on thriller Our Kind of Traitor.

A Most Wanted Man, starring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, premiered at Sundance.

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