International
Fiction Bestsellers
The
Streets of London
Cumming
Goes Undercover, More Fodder for Potter, and Delahunt
Reaches for the Orange
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (APRIL 2001)
With all
eyes focusing intently on the latest deals from the
London Book Fair, we thought we’d swivel the
periscope toward what’s hitting the stores this summer
in the UK. For starters, Charles Cumming’s A
Spy By Nature (May, Michael Joseph) is a
tautly paced, tightly plotted novel about the new face
of spying: industrial espionage. The protagonist, Alec
Milius, is approached by MI6, and the first quarter
of the novel is a detailed and compelling look at the
process of reinventing oneself as a British spy. The
(extremely promotable — PT has seen a photo)
author was himself approached by MI6 upon his university
graduation, and the narrative has a convincing insider’s
tone. With a blurb from Robert Harris calling
him the new le Carré, this one is sure to have
legs. See Lucas Alexander Whitley for rights.
There’s
certainly nothing covert about Simon Prosser,
publisher at Hamish Hamilton, who can do no wrong
at the moment. With Zadie Smith under his belt,
and having acquired the smoking novel of the fair (Hari
Kunzru’s The Impressionist from Jonny Geller
at Curtis Brown), he’s currently publishing the
brilliant Ali Smith’s new novel, Hotel World.
The latest work from the prize-winning Scottish short
story writer is set in an English seaside hotel and
focuses on the strange circumstances surrounding the
death of one of the five characters in the novel, examined
through the eyes of the other four characters. The prose
is startlingly fresh and original, and the author’s
eye for detail makes for a high-impact read. Newly crowned
prince of literary fiction Jim Crace declares,
“I doubt I shall read a tougher or more affecting novel
this year.” All rights are handled by David Godwin.
The Harry
Potter boom continues: a quick mention here for
Philip Pullman, who has at last gone onto the
bestseller list with the third part of the His Dark
Materials series, The Amber Spyglass. Pullman
now has deals in 21 languages — watch out Joanne
Rowling. (Incidentally, Peter Tallick of
Weidenfeld & Nicolson has just commissioned
a piece of non-fiction about the psychology of Harry
Potter — Chicken Soup for the parent’s soul?) In the
same sphere, also set in a recognizable but curiously
skewed England and written by Jasper Fforde is
a series of books that have crossover appeal to an adult/young
adult market (sound familiar?). “There is another 1985,
somewhere in the could-have-been, where Wales is a Socialist
Republic, dodos are available in home-cloning kits,
the Crimean war is 131 years old, and the ending to
Jane Eyre is less than satisfactory. This is
the 1985 of Thursday Next, a literary detective without
equal, fear, or boyfriend.” Hodder has commissioned
two and will publish the first in June, and Terry
Pratchett declares he’s going to be “watching my
back.” See Janklow & Nesbit for rights.
Back in
the real world, but set a little further afield, two
China-related novels are looking like strong contenders
for the summer’s big reads. The first, sold by Annette
Green at last year’s book fair, is Justin Hill’s
The Drink and the Dream Teahouse, which does
have a US deal, and second is Sid Smith’s debut
Something Like a House, for which the agent,
Caroline Dawnay, says she’s never seen such reviews
for a first novel. Set against the austere times of
the cultural revolution in China, James Stuart Fraser,
a private in the British Army, deserts and ends up spending
35 years “among the unshiftable Chinese.” Many of those
years are spent in the wretched poverty of a village
of the despised Miao people, where life revolves around
the solitary buffalo. The tedium of Fraser’s rural subsistence
(existence is too strong a term) is evoked in a controlled
prose, filled with convincing detail. It’s an extraordinary
leap of imagination for the writer, a copy-editor at
the (London) Times, who has never been to China.
Rights are still available from Peters, Fraser &
Dunlop.
Meanwhile,
Meaghan Delahunt’s novel In the Blue House
(Bloomsbury) lands on the recently announced
Orange Prize longlist. The book covers the years
that Trotsky spends with Frida Kahlo in Mexico,
and flashes back to Trotsky and Stalin’s childhood,
building up a portrait of Stalinist rule at the height
of the purges. The author, an Australian short story
writer, dropped out of college to become a communist
recruiter on the factory floor. Rights have been sold
only in Greece so far; see Bloomsbury UK.
Sceptre’s
Orange hope lies with Fred and Edie by Jill
Dawson. The novel is based on a 1922 trial of a
woman tried for conspiring with her young lover Frederick
Bywaters to murder her husband, Percy. The trial took
place in front of heaving crowds at the Old Bailey,
who thrilled to a story of an illicit love affair, a
back-street abortion, domestic violence, murder, and
the prospect of a double execution. Drawing on newspaper
reports as well as letters by Edie to Freddy, the author
creates an intimate voice for Edie in a story of one
woman’s attempts to defy convention. Hodder controls
world rights, and a film based on the book, Another
Life starring Natasha Little and Ion Gruffedd,
will be released (in the UK) next month. We also note
that many of the big hitters are returning to the shelves
this spring, including Jonathan Coe with The
Rotters Club and Pat Barker with Border
Crossing. Talk of a hotly contested Booker
has already begun.
It’s adieu to a long reign on the Australian list for
The Blue Day Book, a small-format, picture-based
book containing cute and humorous photos of animals
with captions lightheartedly illustrating the misery
of human existence. Working off a similar market to
the Little Book of Calm series, which scored
huge successes for Penguin worldwide, the book
was originally turned down by nearly everybody, reports
agent Al Zuckerman. Published in the US by Andrews
McMeel with a first printing of some 20,000 copies,
it was jumped on first by Walden buyer Linda
Jones for counter display. The rush began and sales
at Walden alone now stand at over 100,000, with over
300,000 in print. Meanwhile, sales are just taking off
at Target and look set to be huge. Book two,
Dear Mom, published in March, is already over
75,000 copies and September is set for the third, Looking
for Mr. Right.
A brief welcome to Greece, where Louis de Bernières
continues to reign supreme (in both languages). Thanks
to Eleftheroudakis bookstores, Greece’s finest
and best-established chain, details of the hottest sellers
there will be forthcoming next month.
©2001
Publishing Trends
