Teacher’s toast of lit crowd

Unknown Manhattan teacher Matthew Thomas is the toast of the publishing world overnight after “We Are Not Ourselves” — a novel he took 10 years to write — sparked a bidding war. Sources say it got more than a $1 million advance in North America, and closed a six-figure UK deal at the London Book Fair. Thomas, 38, has taught English at Xavier High School for seven years and is married with twins. He told us, “I’m humbled . . . Working on it for more than a decade, I faced a lot of self-doubt and threw out hundreds of pages.” The novel’s described as a “sprawling portrait” of a family that moves from Queens to Bronxville, and its matriarch’s determination and diagnosis with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Jonathan Karp of winning publisher Simon & Schuster told us, “This is a magical experience that happens once every few years . . . a major American novel that every publisher dreams of.” WME agent Bill Clegg said auctions “are still happening all over Europe,” and called Thomas, “one of the nicest, most humble guys ever. Sometimes the good guys win.”