From a rights agent’s perspective, The Strawberry Code offers something genuinely uncommon in the current thriller market: a female-led speculative political thriller with a single, striking central image — SOMA, the novel’s social credit currency — that does the marketing work a comp title usually has to do for you. Readers and publishers who responded to Never Let Me Go, The Circle, and Klara and the Sun have an appetite for exactly this kind of grounded, character-first speculative fiction, and this book gives them a more plot-forward, higher-stakes read than any of the three.

Udi Dagan’s background is an asset rather than a curiosity: three decades as a finance and insurance entrepreneur give him a genuine, lived understanding of how systems of trust, credit, and control actually operate — the same mechanics that drive SOMA — which lends the world-building real authority. That said, [To confirm with author/Udi Dagan]: final word count and current publication status. The submitted materials include reader reviews, which suggests the book may already be available in some market or edition; we recommend confirming this directly before positioning the title to publishers as an unpublished manuscript.

We see strong fit with commercial and literary thriller imprints, and with a female-led, character-driven premise and a single unforgettable visual hook, this is also a natural fit for film and television scouts — the SOMA concept alone gives it the kind of high-concept pitch line adaptation buyers respond to.