Making a
defiant splash in Australia this month is the bluntly
subtitled Dawn: One Hell of a Life, the self-told
tale of Australian swimming legend Dawn Fraser,
who was the first athlete in the world to win the same
event at three successive Olympic Games — the 100-meter
freestyle. Billed in the press as an “outlaw” and “party-girl,”
the feisty Fraser was banned from competition for 10
years after she refused to wear the official swimsuit
(“I was falling out at the bottom whenever I bent over,”
she explained) and was arrested for stealing an Olympic
flag, effectively retiring her after the 1964 Tokyo
Olympics. As she later groused, “If I were swimming
today, I’d be pretty close to a billionaire.” After
hanging up her swimsuit, however, the former freestyler
dove into politics — the publicity folks called it a
“remarkable comeback from publican to politician” —
and was elected to the New South Wales parliament in
1988. Revered now more than ever in Australia, Fraser
weathered a series of tabloid-style setbacks, including
the death of her mother in a car accident while Dawn
was at the wheel. A first print-run of 65,000 copies
is vanishing from bookstores, with customers said to
be lugging out five copies at a time. The publisher
has gone back to press, and we’re told only New Zealand
rights have been sold, leaving all other foreign rights,
including the US, up for grabs from Hodder Headline
in Australia.
Meanwhile,
a film tie-in calls a smash hit back to center stage
in India this month, where The Inscrutable Americans
by Anurag Mathur won praise upon its initial
publication in 1991 as a “two-way satire” skewering
both American and Indian cultures. Now in its 19th printing,
the “earthy, though ribald” story follows the awkward
cultural immersion of protagonist Gopal, described as
a “hick from an obscure Indian village called Jajau
where his family runs a hair oil factory.” Gopal’s year-long
visit to America as a chemical engineering student quickly
turns riotous (he drinks 37 cans of Coca-Cola on the
incoming flight alone), and the slapstick goes into
overdrive as Gopal (no doubt a riff on Bhopal) tangles
with “beef, beer, and racism” on his quest for that
ultimate American commodity: sex. As one reviewer put
it, the book “had me smiling on page one, giggling on
page two, and laughing out loud by page three, and I
didn’t stop there.” As for the film, directed by Chandra
Siddartha, one reviewer lamented that “the camera-work
is horrendous” but lauded the feature as a “marvelous
attempt.” Mathur’s other novels include Making a
Minister Smile and Scenes from an Executive’s
Life, the latter said to be a study of the typical
northern Indian male who finds fame and fortune at a
tender age but has not a clue about life. A new novel
is expected next year. Contact Renuka Chatterjee
at Rupa (via HarperCollins India).
In Canada,
poet Michael Redhill’s first novel Martin
Sloane has hit pay dirt (though it’s no longer in
the top ten), painting a portrait of a “ferociously
intelligent” young woman who is inspired by the constructions
of an artist named Martin Sloane (who himself is modeled
on the reclusive American artist Joseph Cornell
and his eccentric boxed assemblages). Praised as “exquisitely
crafted” and “remarkably assured,” the book explores
the metaphor of the box as it unravels protagonist Jolene’s
obsession with the older artist — and her profound sense
of loss after he gets up one night and disappears. The
34-year-old Redhill, who serves as managing editor of
Brick magazine, is also seeing a book of poems
published this year called Light-crossing (House
of Anansi), along with a reprint of his 1993 collection
Lake Nora Arms. US rights to the new novel have
been sold to Little, Brown for publication in
2002, but foreign rights are available. See agent Ellen
Levine.
Cartoonist
Roberto Fontanarrosa hits Argentina this month
with I’ll Tell You More. Translations are a bit
dicey, we’re told, as the author pastiches everything
from Reader’s Digest to Scientific American,
with a bit of García Márquez thrown in for good
measure. Fontanarrosa, who was born in 1944, has published
more than 60 books since 1979, including three novels
and 10 collections of short stories. His books of graphic
humor have been translated in Italy and Brazil, and
a whopper of an anthology is under discussion in China.
I’ll Tell You More has sold 10,000 copies in
two months (a feat for Argentina) and all foreign rights
are open, as they are for the author’s Best Seller,
The World Was in Error, and La Gansada,
says Daniel Divinsky at Ediciones de la Flor.
Sweden’s
powerhouse Per Olov Enquist has prescribed 50,000
copies of his latest novel The Royal Physician’s
Visit to cure all ailments at bookstores throughout
Germany, where the book hits the list this month. Enquist’s
first novel since the blow-out Captain Nemo’s Library
of 1991, the historical tale is set in Denmark in the
18th century and tells the story of the mad King Christian,
his young queen, and the royal physician, one Dr. Struensee.
Alas, the German doctor implicated himself in a love
triangle with the queen and was hung, drawn, and quartered.
The book moved one swooning critic to write that “the
erotic scenes are among the most beautiful I have read
in modern Swedish literature.” Originally published
in 1999, the novel won Sweden’s prestigious August
Prize, and translation rights have been sold to
19 countries, including the US, where Overlook
will publish in November. But take note: Enquist also
has a forthcoming novel, set to be published in Sweden
this September. Over 75,000 copies of the new one have
been sold in Enquist’s home country, and bidding in
Spain was just concluding at press time. See Agneta
Markås at Norstedts.
And while
on the subject of Sweden’s heavy hitters, the artist
formerly known as the “Maigret of the ’90s” is back
in action. Håkan Nesser hits the lists with the
tersely titled The Swallow, the Cat, the Rose, Death,
which is the ninth volume in the Van Veeteren crime
series. The book has sold nearly 53,000 copies, and
deals with the exploits of police in Maardam, although,
as one riled-up reviewer noted, “I shall not talk too
much about the intrigues of the plot; you just have
to read the book, by which I really mean have to!!”.
We’re told Maria Rejt of Macmillan UK
has recently acquired four of Nesser’s titles, which
marks the author’s first publication in English. All
together, the cunning crime maestro has sold 850,000
copies in Sweden — not counting the 100,000 copies per
title that Bertelsmann unloads in Germany — and
is translated in 13 languages. See agent Linda Michaels
for rights.
