One of Scandinavia’s
sassiest stand-up comedians drenches himself in “sweaty
randiness and lonely searching” this month with A
UFO Makes an Entry, a second novel by Jonas Gardell
about the star-crossed generation that grew up in the
suburban 1970s, weaned on John Travolta and the Sex
Pistols. A sort of comedian bildungsroman, the
book takes up where Gardell’s earlier volume Growing
Up a Comedian left off, with the tortured lives
of teenagers Juha and Jenny. As they bump and grind
their way through love and rebellion, the tragicomic
teens confront a world equally tarnished by skin blemishes,
bullies, and nuclear power plants. Possibly the best
of Gardell’s “tender yet cruelly accurate” tales to
date, this book is said to dexterously juggle bathos,
pathos, and polyester — all to the gyrating soundtrack
of Saturday Night Fever. The 38-year-old Gardell
made a promising splash in 1985 with his debut novel
The Passion Play, a work about homosexual love,
and has gone on to write a number of well-received plays.
Rights to the new book have been sold thus far to Norway
(Tiden) and Denmark (Tiderne Skifter).
See Clara Gustafsson at Norstedts.
In other
northern European matters, we’re pleased to introduce
our bestseller list from Finland, which debuted last
month. A voracious nation of readers, Finland cranks
out the second highest number of titles per capita in
all of Europe. (Iceland, however, is the top titles-per-capita
nation by a long shot.) Though it’s also a nation of
short print runs — averaging 4,100 copies for a work
of general fiction — we offer a brief overview of the
industry to get you oriented. Total book sales in Finland
amounted to about $360 million in 1999, with 40% of
books sold in bookstores. The heavy hitters among Finnish
publishers are WSOY, Otava, Edita,
and Tammi, while the only Finnish wholesaler
is Kirjavälitys Oy, owned jointly by bookstores
and publishers, which has 30,000 titles in stock. Though
the bestseller list this month is a rogues’ gallery
of usual suspects, recent Finnish gems include Susanne
Ringell’s “ABC for grown-ups,” a slim volume with
a whopper of a title: It Was Embarrassment that Made
Adele Fat. The book offers a mini-story for each
letter of the alphabet, and is said to blend linguistics,
psychology, and the absurd. As one critic warmly averred,
“Female absurdism is something of which we cannot have
too much.” See publisher Söderström for rights.
In Germany,
literary argonaut Peter Stamm roves through an
Uncharted Landscape in his second novel, an “elegy
about the futility of life” that unfolds from a small
Norwegian port of call above the Arctic Circle. A listless,
28-year-old customs officer named Kathrine boards a
Hurtig Route ship called the Polarlys, and the
voyage turns into a spiritual trek departing from her
drunken first husband and 8-year-old child, and sailing
to points unknown amid life’s icy lagoons. Stamm’s 1998
work Agnes was deemed a “fine first novel” recalling
Raymond Carver in its stark portrayal of two
lovers who meet in the Chicago public library and get
terminally tangled when he begins writing a “fictionalized”
account of their relationship. Critics called the story
“the innermost of a set of Chinese boxes.” The 38-year-old
Stamm has been an itinerant freelance writer and journalist
who now lives in Switzerland, and his novel Agnes
is now published in nine countries, including the UK
(Bloomsbury), France (Christian Bourgois),
and Spain (Quaderns Crema). Rights to the new
one, which is just below the top ten this month, have
been sold to Italy (Neri Pozza), with deals imminent
in Spain and France. Talk to Marianne Fritsch
at the Liepman agency.
Also in
Germany, TV and radio sensation Elke Heidenreich
has floored even her staunchest admirers with a collection
of seven short stories called Turn Your Back on the
World. Mournful but leavened with irony, the stories
offer elliptical reveries, such as one about a woman
who vows to find a former lover 25 years after their
week-long affair. The two hook up for a tryst and —
wham-bam! — the Berlin Wall kicks the dust. The author’s
Nero Corleone (a children’s book illustrated
by Quint Buchholz) was published in the US by
Viking in 1997, as well as a dozen other countries.
The new one has sold over 120,000 copies in Germany,
with rights sold only to France thus far. See Susanne
Bauknecht at Hanser for rights.
Meanwhile,
Greece has been chasing after the Turk in the Garden,
an “attractive and atmospheric” new novel by prolific
journalist and playwright Yiannis Xanthoulis.
The time-twisting plot centers on the 11-year-old son
of a gardener who becomes the catalyst in a series of
supernatural events — all of which culminate around
the garden of an aristocratic éminence grise.
Protagonist Ilias deploys his “paranormal abilities”
to avenge the death of the old woman’s brother, and
soon a 16th-century noble Turk pops in among the dahlias
to wreak havoc. Xanthoulis’ novel Dead Liqueur
sold 122,000 copies, and was published in Holland (de
Geus), Japan (Kodansha), Spain (Seix Barral),
and France (Hatier) — though we’re told rights
have reverted in France and are now up for grabs. The
new one, published in June, has sold more than 25,000
copies, and all rights are open from Maria Fakinou
at Kastaniotis.
Also of
note in Greece, a brief update on Nikos Themelis
(see PT 5/01), whose novel The Search
is now up to 70,000 copies sold, while his second effort,
The Subversion, has sold 60,000. Critics were
wary of Themelis’ alter ego — he’s counselor to the
Greek prime minister — but we’re told readers have found
The Search a Jamesian mosaic woven from the life
of a young man in Asia Minor. Rights have been sold
to Germany (Piper), Italy (Crocetti),
and Turkey (Dogan Kitap). Meanwhile, The Subversion
has been deemed “a highly attractive novel” about the
Greek Diaspora, detailed in “perfectly accurate period
atmosphere.” See Kedros for rights.
And Australia
is atwitter over the latest from Matthew Reilly,
whose Area 7 is the young maestro’s fictional
look at “America’s most secret base,” an Air Force outpost
in the Utah desert. The book recounts a presidential
visit to the compound that turns ugly when hostile forces
are found inside. Reilly’s earlier efforts Ice Station
and Temple were published in eight countries,
and the new one has sold 100,000 copies. Rights have
been sold to the UK (Macmillan), Germany (Econ),
and Holland (Het Spectrum), with publication
in the US expected in February from St. Martin’s.
See Macmillan UK for rights.
