With international
lists seemingly locked in place, we cast a glance at
a couple of interesting, if less remunerative, deals
this month. First off, US agent Rosalie Siegel
reports that she has started selling to so-called regional
publishers — presumably as the larger ones take fewer
and fewer risks as the economy slows. A recent case
in point is Robert Harnum’s Exile in the Kingdom.
Narrated by a seventeen-year-old boy living with a deadbeat
mom and an estranged father, the basketball star one
day acquires a gun and starts a rampage at school —
by now a familiar story in this country. The first sale
via France’s Mary Kling was to Hachette,
which published the title in 1999 as La Dernière
Sentinelle, and whose Canadian subsidiary also published
in Montreal. This led to a movie option from Canadian
production company Max Films (best known in the
US for this reporter’s favorite movie, The Decline
and Fall of the American Empire). Which led to the
rights being acquired in the US for Fall ’01 publication
by Phil Pochoda’s Hardscrabble Press,
associated with the University Press of New England.
Siegel describes the novel as intense, powerful, and
sober in the fashion of Camus’ The Stranger.
The agent reports she will shortly go out with the author’s
second novel, The Siege of Innocence.
Back to
this month’s lists, Bonniers overwhelms Sweden
with six titles, one of which is Miss Priss and Her
Career, an illustrated book that takes a humorous
look at the life and demands of a spirited working woman.
Miss Priss knows that the important thing is, of course,
to become somebody important. A nuclear physicist, a
film director, or a Manhattan designer, anything as
long as you get the Nobel Prize before you’re twenty-five.
But what if, somewhere between the latest issue of Glamour
and the Employment Service, you’ve lost your determination?
Miss Priss is both an accurate spoof on careerism and
a touching tale about the fear of not having what it
takes. Author Joanna Rubin Dranger received the
Swedish Illustrators’ Award for 2000; her earlier work
Miss Scaredy-Cat and Love has been sold to Norway,
Germany, and Finland, while Miss Priss has been
sold to Norway so far. See agent Linda Michaels
for US rights.
On a few
further notes in Sweden, “a city of chaos and turbulence”
awaits in Maja Lundgren’s Pompeii.
Set in 78–79 AD, the year before the catastrophic earthquake,
the work has painted a picture of a time and a place
that was equally bawdy, humorous, moving, and real,
while tending inexorably toward its doom. See Linda
Michaels for US rights. And watch out for Boo Hoo:
A Dot-com Story from Concept to Catastrophe, from
the Swedish co-founders of the most famous dot-com disaster
Boo.com. Ernst Malmsten and Kajsa Leander,
writing with WSJ Europe journalist Erik Portanger,
create a tale to be published this fall by Random
House (UK) business books that’s a pacey, glamorous
business thriller. Set to do big business in the UK
with a huge serial deal in place, this one’s being pitched
as “barbarians at the gate for the dot-com age.” See
Gillon Aitken Associates for rights.
Neighboring
Holland, meanwhile, is exercising open trade in translations
with England, with an English first novel by Santa
Montefiore making an appearance. Set mainly in the
Argentinian campo, Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree
is a novel of illicit and forbidden love. Its central
heroine, Sofia, is a spoilt and spirited tomboy — a
Scarlett O’Hara of her times — and loved by all
around her, except her own mother, Anna, who is tortured
by jealousy and a sense of inadequacy. When Anna discovers
Sofia has embarked on a passionate relationship which
will bring shame on the families involved, she exiles
her for over twenty years. Book club France-Loisirs
printed “masses and masses” of copies prior to trade
publication by Belfond, according to the agent.
Rights have also been acquired in Germany, Italy, and
Estonia, though are yet to be snapped up Stateside.
The author’s name first became familiar for being sister
of the more famous Tara Palmer-Tompkinson, London’s
It-girl of the nineties, but Santa’s reputation as a
writer has been quietly growing. Her second novel, The
Butterfly Box, is an epic saga of love and metamorphosis,
and will also be published by Hodder, due out
next year. For translation rights, see Linda Shaughnessy
at AP Watt; for US rights see Jo Frank
at same.
Holland,
or rather Meulenhoff, has meanwhile made a two-book
deal with Harvill for the novels of Erwin
Mortier. The first, Marcel, which received
tremendous critical attention, will be published this
fall in the UK. It is a novel about a child’s growing
awareness of the secret at the heart of his family.
A ten-year-old boy lives alone with his grandmother
in a Flemish village. Among the photographs his grandmother
cherishes is a portrait of a boy named Marcel, who died
young and far away. How did he die? The little boy is
determined to find out. Standaard der Letteren
declared the book to be “a brilliant novel, full of
nostalgia, the bitter history of Flemish collaboration,
and hilarious humour.” Rights were sold by Meulenhoff
to France (Pauvert) and Germany (Suhrkamp).
The second novel by Mortier, My Second Skin,
has just entered the Dutch top ten. Also written through
the eyes of a boy, the story is about the gently growing
love of one boy for another at school, the pain of youth
and growth, and ultimately loss. Only German rights
have sold for My Second Skin; US rights to both
novels are available from Harvill; contact Barbara
Schwepcke.
In France,
Albin Michel expects Didier van Cauwelaert’s
The Apparition to be his English-language breakthrough.
It details the exploits of Nathalie, a young ophthalmologist,
who is called upon by the Vatican to examine an image
of the Virgin that appeared miraculously on the tunic
of an Aztec Indian in the early 16th century. Political
maneuverings in Vatican City reluctantly involve Nathalie
in the battle between science, politics, and the Church.
As her own convictions are called into doubt, she ultimately
finds meaning in her life. A consistent seller (about
100,000 copies) in his homeland, van Cauwelaert’s 1994
novel One-Way Ticket won the Prix Goncourt,
and film rights to his last novel The Education of
a Fairy were sold to Miramax despite there
being no translation deal for the book. His translation
of the classic Marcel Aymé play, The Walker-Through-Walls,
will soon be performed on Broadway. Contact Lisa
Rounds at the French Publisher’s Agency for
rights.
