Sweden has
veered “disturbingly close to reality” in recent months
as Norwegian author Karin Fossum takes the nation
on a harrowing journey right up to the belfry of The
House of the Insane. The book, which has been on
the list for the past two months but is just below the
top ten at the moment, spirals through the mental involutions
of 23-year-old protagonist Hajna, who required 160 stitches
in her head after slamming into a large shop window.
“All she longs for,” we’re eerily informed, “is death.”
Based on the author’s experience working at a psychiatric
institution, the book has been described as a Scandinavian
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, letting Fossum’s
knack for “hassle-free momentum” loose inside the asylum.
The author is better known for her crime novels, which
have sold as many as 55,000 copies per title and are
translated into 14 languages. Her fifth such opus, Beloved
Poona, was published last year and hailed as a portrait
of “painfully credible” characters set churning in “a
masterful novel about the margins of death.” Fossum’s
Don’t Look Back will be published in the UK by
Harvill next summer, with Poona to come
in 2003. So far 28,000 copies of the new one have been
sold, and only Sweden and Germany have bought rights,
according to foreign rights manager Eirin Hagen
at Cappelen.
Also in
Sweden, Åke Edwardson hits the scene with the
fifth title in his crime series, Heaven is a Place
on Earth, featuring Inspector Erik Winter. A four-year-old
boy in Gothenburg is abducted from a playground, and
Winter delves into “the loneliness of man” to solve
the case. Critics deem Edwardson’s work “bloody genuine
and good,” and the hard-boiled series has been published
in 12 countries, selling more than 450,000 copies. The
first three books from this “masterly portrayer of man’s
innermost thoughts” are slated for Swedish TV this fall.
The new one has been sold only to Germany and Denmark,
with negotiations under way in the US and UK. See Agneta
Markås at Norstedts. And on a final Swedish
crime note, The Diabolic pops up as the twelfth
crime novel from Bjorn Hellberg featuring the
inimitable Inspector Sten Wall, who in this installment
bumps into Mr. Evil himself and tussles with the occult.
When author Hellberg isn’t slaying demons, he reigns
as the “#1 tennis expert in the world,” with 23 titles
under his belt on that subject, and also moonlights
as a Swedish TV personality. Rights have been sold to
Germany (Argon) and Holland (de Geus).
See agent Bengt Nordin.
Crime has
also been paying off exquisitely in the Netherlands
for the prolific A.C. (Appie) Baantjer, whose
De Cock series has soared to an epic 54 titles and regularly
boasts first print runs of over 100,000 copies. Two
new titles every year chronicle the latest exploits
of Inspector De Cock and his cunning assistant Vledder,
who operate from their base camp in Amsterdam’s red-light
district and bivouac in nearby bars, ruminating over
snifters of cognac. In De Cock and the Drifting Corpse,
a staple of the Dutch list for months now, a woman’s
missing banker-husband is found dead with a dagger in
his back. Turns out the dagger is symbolic of the secret
Brotherhood of the Cross, and, to put it mildly, mayhem
ensues. Meanwhile, Baantjer’s latest book, De Cock
and the Merry Bacchus, unfolds from a man’s report
of a missing uncle and features, you guessed it, a collection
of photographs of the Apostle Peter. Adding to the Baantjer
franchise, a TV spin-off has plastered the detective
duo across the little screen in Holland, Belgium, and
France. The 78-year-old Baantjer (né Albert Cornelis)
was a researcher in the Amsterdam police force for 30
years, and based his lead character on a fellow officer
whose code name in World War II was “Le Coq.” The series
has been published in China, Russia, and Korea, while
Ullstein has previously published the series
in Germany (though rights reverted in 1989) and Intercontinental
has published eight novels in the US, but passed on
recent titles. Rights have never been sold in the UK.
See Maran Olthoff at De Fontein.
In Argentina,
the venerable historian Felix Luna breaks out
with his first work of historical fiction, Martín
Aldama, a “delicious novel of adventure and patriotism”
told through the protagonist’s memoirs of life in early
19th-century Argentina. Through Aldama’s eyes we revisit
an explosively formative period for the nation, weathering
the reconquest of Buenos Aires and plunging into the
May Revolution. Action commences in June 1806, when
Buenos Aires is attacked by a British fleet under the
command of Admiral Home Riggs Popham, and our young
warrior joins the battle that expels the invaders and
sparks a lasting movement for independence among Spanish
South America. Along the way, the gallant Aldama stops
off for a few torrid trysts amid the din of battle,
and as a sidelight strikes up a blood-brother bond with
a young Irishman. Deemed “one of Argentina’s finest
intellectuals,” author Luna has published more than
a dozen nonfiction titles and is considered a shaping
literary force in Argentinian annals. All rights are
available; contact Veronica Berisso at Planeta
Argentina.
In India,
The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes dredges up a Trans-Himalayan
episode from the great inspector’s past, and narrates
Holmes’s adventures in Tibet with the wily Bengali scholar
Hurree Chunder Mookerjee. The book, an unlikely mix
of Holmesian drama and Tibetan mythology, is jam-packed
with the usual narrow escapes and brilliant deductions,
not to mention “the strangest of mysteries Sherlock
Holmes has ever encountered.” Author Jamyang Norbu,
a Tibetan scholar from Dharamsala, “takes to pastiche
with grace and elan,” as one critic cheered, while another
put it this way: “If you enjoy the X-Files and
don’t mind mixing Holmes with the paranormal, then you
really will love this.” The book won the Crossword
Prize this year. Rights have been sold to the US (Bloomsbury),
UK (John Murray), and France (Philippe Piquier);
see agent Susan Schulman at schulman@aol.com.
And the
lexicographer in you will be deeply satisfied to know
that among the top 15 titles in the Netherlands this
month, no less than 7 are Prisma dictionaries,
with Dutch, English-Dutch, and Dutch-English filling
slots 2, 3, and 4. (Bridget Jones beats them
out of first place.) What gives? “It is the best-known
dictionary for schools, that’s why the summer is indeed
packed with bestselling Prismas,” says our source at
publisher Het Spectrum, noting that all editions
are revised. Talk about cultural literacy.
