International
Fiction Bestsellers
Time Regained
Eco
Back in Italy, Dahl Redux in Spain, and Harry Potter
Everywhere Else
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (FEBRUARY 2001)
Umberto
Eco is at it again. Romance, that is. His fourth such
novel to date — featuring the picaresque adventures of
the title character, Baudolino — has hit the stands
in Italy, and we’re told its pages are bursting with tall
tales of “imaginary Italian” and “mysterious lands inhabited
by monsters.” Oh, and there’s a love story in there, too.
Baudolino is a boy living in the 12th-century countryside
near Marengo, and, as Eco explained to La Repubblica,
“is a little rascal, similar to the scoundrels that exist
in many indigenous mythologies: in Germany they call him
Schelm, in England the Trickster God.” The first chapter
is told as written by Baudolino directly onto parchment
when he was 14; Eco said he got a kick out of concocting
the region’s vulgar form of Latin, “about which we don’t
have any documentation. I enjoyed myself a lot.” Nonetheless,
claims Eco, it’s not a book for lexicographers. “There
are no advances in philology here,” he told the paper.
“These are not pages of erudition, they are pages of comedy.”
The book is due out in the US in fall 2002 from Harcourt.
In related news, Foucault’s Pendulum has finally
been optioned to Fine Line Features, with production
set for late 2001.
Also in Italy, for what it’s worth, James Hillman
has nipped the list at #9 with The Force of Character,
a nonfiction look at old age. The value of aging, Hillman
writes, is that “we become more characteristic of who
we are simply by lasting into later years.” The idea
— as those who read Random’s US edition will
recall — is that the aging process is meaningful: lapse
of short-term memory lets us savor the past, while weakening
stamina enhances our ability to notice the little things.
Seems like this one’s due for a breakout on Italy’s
version of Oprah.
In the UK, Wendy Holden is fresh off the back
forty with Pastures Nouveaux, in which artist
Rosie longs for a peaceful country cottage, but is rudely
awakened from her dreams when she realizes that village
life actually resembles a pastoralized looney bin. Holden
is a journalist and former editor at Tatler magazine
who’s now at the Mail on Sunday. No US publisher
was under contract for the new one at press time, but
her past two books have been pubbed in the States by
Plume (Bad Heir Day is due out in the
US this summer). See Jonathan Lloyd at Curtis
Brown for rights. Also in the UK, veteran conspiracy
scribe Colin Forbes returns with Rhinoceros,
in which perennial characters Tweed, Paula Grey, and
Bob Newman are back on the trail of five heads of state
who are plotting to unleash a wave of civil uprisings
upon the Western world. The twist? They’re conspiring
over the Internet. No US publisher had signed on as
yet, though deals were made in Germany (Heyne)
and expected shortly in Holland, Sweden, Israel, and
other lands far and near. See agent Carol Heaton
at Greene & Heaton.
An oddity in Spain this month: Superzorro turns
up by the late childrens’ author Roald Dahl,
better known for the long-playing hits Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant
Peach. The work is actually Fantastic Mr. Fox,
in which three farmers, each one meaner than the other,
try all-out warfare to get rid of Mr. Fox and his family.
As one reviewer put it, the book “tells the story of
clever Mr. Fox, his adoring wife, and their four small
children, who outsmart three of the nastiest, ugliest,
and ultimately dumbest farmers ever to raise poultry.”
The book was published in 1970 by Knopf. Dahl’s
agent is David Higham Associates. Also in Spain,
back from the past is Katherine Neville’s The
Eight, the 1988 cult classic inspired by the author’s
work in North Africa as an international consultant
to the Algerian government at the time of the OPEC embargo.
The book is a sort of postmodern thriller set in both
1972 and 1790, and deals with computer expert Catherine
Velis, who receives an assignment in Algeria, which
is complicated by a diabolical global chess game. Now
on the Spanish list at #6, the book was published in
the US by Ballantine, and has been translated
in some 15 languages.
In France, Tahar Ben Jelloun’s That Blinding
Absence of Light is the latest from the celebrated
Morocco-born author. Ben Jelloun emigrated to France
in 1961 and won the Prix Goncourt in 1987 with
his novel The Sacred Night (he was the first
North African to win the prize). The author had a global
hit with Racism Explained to My Daughter, which
was translated into more than a dozen languages and
sold more than 300,000 copies, and he has been investigating
the continuing problem of European-Arab relations. Seuil
has published the new one. On a more predictable note,
Armistead Maupin hits the French list — battling
at least two Harry Potter titles for the distinction
— with The Night Listener, Maupin’s semi-autobiographical
novel about a storyteller for a long-running PBS series
featuring people “caught in the supreme joke of modern
life who were forced to survive by making families of
their friends.” (It was out in the US last year from
Harper.) And a last tip in France: Patricia MacDonald,
who is on the list with Last Refuge, is “huge
in France,” though she’s never made it in the US, our
source reports. MacDonald has previously published Lost
Innocents and The Unknown; see agent Jane
Rotrosen.
And in a brief note from Switzerland, word comes to
us that Swiss author Urs Widmer has broken the
100,000-copy mark with his latest novel, Mother’s
Lover, which Diogenes published last August.
The Zurich-based Widmer is known for his books Love
Letter for Mary and In the Congo, the former
containing a love letter that is itself written in English,
though embedded in a German text consisting of the brief
narrative frame and the “author’s” comments that interrupt
the love letter on several occasions. At press time
rights had been sold to France (Gallimard), Italy
(Bompiani), Holland (Byblos), and Denmark
(Fremd). See Hedwig Janés at Diogenes
for a synopsis and rights information.
In other news, you’ll be relieved to know that one prominent
US Senator will be covering some of the family legal
bills care of a few international rights deals. Heard
on the street (though no one was confirming anything
at press time): Hillary Clinton’s book was going
to Headline UK for $1.3 million, to Fayard
in France for $400,000, and deals were completed in
Germany and Finland, with Holland still being negotiated.
All that’s on top of the rumored $8 million deal with
Simon & Schuster in the US.
©2001
Publishing Trends
