Eric Abraham, founder of UKproduction outfit Portobello Pictures, is financing the creation of a new bookpublishing company.

The venture, PortobelloBooks, will be run by Philip Gwyn Jones, former publisher of HarperCollins' UKliterary imprint Flamingo.

The list will run to between15 and 20 new titles a year, focusing on international fiction and activistnon-fiction. The company aims to reach a £1m turnover and profitability withinthree years.

Gwyn Jones will be based atPortobello Picturess offices in Notting Hill, London, and will hire an in-houseeditor and publicist.

Potobello Picturess mostsuccessful film was Kolya, which won the Academy Award for ForeignLanguage Film in 1997. It produces one or two new film projects a year, oftenbased on books. It is also working on a stage version of the bestselling novel Embersby Sandor Marai, which is being adapted Christopher Hampton.

At Flamingo from 1996, GwynJones published Arundhati Roys' 1997Booker Prize-winning The God Of Small Things and Naomi Klein'sbestselling polemic No Logo.

Other authors on his listincluded Douglas Coupland, Jhumpa Lahiri, Doris Lessing, Magnus Mills andGeorge Monbiot. He left HC last summer after the Flamingo list was axed.

He said there was a gap inthe market for a small independentpublisher specialising in novelists from outside the UK and 'politicallyengaged' non-fiction authors.