Jack Thorne (UK's Skins) has been tapped to pen a film adaptation of the Helen Simonson novel Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. Deadline reports that Thorne will write the script for producers Paula Mazur and Mitchell Kaplan (of the Mazur Kaplan Company) and Kevin McCormick (of Langley Park Pictures) who have acquired film rights to the book. Simonson's debut effort was a bestseller upon being released by Random House in 2010 and centers on the relationship between a retired British army major and a Pakistani woman who runs his local convenience store. In addition to Skins and Major Pettigrew, Thorne also penned The Scouting Book for Boys and has adapted A Long Way Down by author Nick Hornby.

To learn more about Major Pettigrew, hit the jump for a synopsis of Simonson's novel.

Here's a synopsis for Major Pettigrew's Last Stand [from Amazon]:

In her charming debut novel, Simonson tells the tale of Maj. Ernest Pettigrew, an honor-bound Englishman and widower, and the very embodiment of duty and pride. As the novel opens, the major is mourning the loss of his younger brother, Bertie, and attempting to get his hands on Bertie's antique Churchill shotgun—part of a set that the boys' father split between them, but which Bertie's widow doesn't want to hand over. While the major is eager to reunite the pair for tradition's sake, his son, Roger, has plans to sell the heirloom set to a collector for a tidy sum. As he frets over the guns, the major's friendship with Jasmina Ali—the Pakistani widow of the local food shop owner—takes a turn unexpected by the major (but not by readers). The author's dense, descriptive prose wraps around the reader like a comforting cloak, eventually taking on true page-turner urgency as Simonson nudges the major and Jasmina further along and dangles possibilities about the fate of the major's beloved firearms.