The specter
of bubonic plague coming down the mail chute rattles
all of Paris in an uncannily topical work by the French
archaeologist and crime writer Fred Vargas. In
the author’s latest novel, Leave Quickly and Return
Late (which, incidentally, was written over a year
ago), hundreds of doors are found painted with a symbol
last used during the Middle Ages to protect households
from the Black Death. Then pandemonium ensues when the
postman comes calling with suspicious missives allegedly
infected with the deadly disease, and things get grimmer
a few days later, when strangled corpses turn up looking
like they’d contracted the plague. The book’s title,
by the way, is the advice that sages once imparted to
citizens whenever the plague reared its head: leave
quickly, flee far away, and take the slow boat back.
Vargas has been praised for “exceptionally well-made
and well-written contributions to the roman policier,”
and her other titles have sold more than 100,000 copies.
She mines her archaeological research (specialty: animal
bones) for forensic subplots. Her earlier novel Waking
the Dead was published in seven countries, including
Germany (Aufbau), Italy (Einaudi), Greece
(Diamantis), and Japan (Tokyo Sogensha).
The new one sold 31,000 copies in two weeks, and both
US and UK rights are available, says Frédéric Martin,
rights manager at Viviane Hamy.
Also raising
a ruckus in France this month is Goncourt winner
and Académie Française member Erik Orsenna’s
“lighthanded, dreamlike” new work that takes playful
aim at that most hallowed of French obsessions: grammar.
Said to be an homage to literary lion Saint-Exupéry,
Grammar Is a Sweet Song is a tale told with “supreme
elegance” that follows the adventures of a brother and
sister who are shipwrecked on a desert island, as the
sea empties their heads of language. Happily for Francophiles
everywhere, they’ve landed on a treasure island inhabited
by millions of words, which flit about like butterflies.
The book has sold 110,000 copies in France, with rights
deals soon to be completed in Germany, Italy, and Korea.
English rights are available; see Fabienne Roussel
at Stock. And finally in France, Algiers:
White Town by Régine Deforges is one of eight
volumes in the series known as The Blue Bicycle,
which kicked off in 1981. In the latest installment,
intrepid heroine Lea wends her way back to France 15
years after World War II, as the Algerian War rages
on. She and lover Francois take up spying on behalf
of Algerian militants — even as Francois serves the
Gaullist cause. Though it has slipped off this month’s
list, the book has a first print run of 130,000 copies,
plus 100,000 for book clubs, and world rights are being
negotiated, according to Martine Bertea at Fayard.
In Holland,
bestselling author Jeroen Brouwers is back in
action after a lengthy furlough with Secret Rooms,
a “wide panorama of intrigues, backbiting and adultery”
said to be “blowing apart the baby-boomer generation’s
belief in themselves.” The book handily skewers what
one critic calls “the generation that wanted to better
the world, but above all better their bank accounts,”
and questions the wisdom of keeping “secret chambers”
in our lives that we shield from others. Protagonist
Jelmer is besieged by repressed emotions after his daughter
gets locked up in an asylum and his estranged wife turns
out to have a few secrets of her own. As one critic
explained: “This is a book full of sucking, plopping
mud, torrential rains, and no less ominous storms.”
Brouwers’ earlier hit Sunken Red won the Prix
Fémina for best foreign novel in 1995, and to date
60,000 copies of the new one are in print. Rights have
been sold to Germany (DVA). See Laura Susijn
at the Susijn Agency in London.
Also in
Holland, the perennially popular Geert Mak is
getting raves for the “instant classic” My Fathers’
Century, which is a nonfiction chronicle of three
generations in the intriguing Mak lineage. Grandfather
Mak was a sailmaker with a stalwart faith in tradition,
and his son was a Calvinist clergyman who worked amid
the decolonization of Indonesia. Making his familial
saga a parable of modern times, Mak fils endeavors
to show that his father’s generation “marked the pivot
on which our century tipped over.” The author’s earlier
work Amsterdam: A Brief Life of the City (“highly
readable,” sayeth the Financial Times) was published
in the UK by Harvill in 1999, and is reportedly
forthcoming in the US from Harvard, in addition
to rights sales in Germany (Siedler), the Czech
Republic (Cinemax), and Russia (Ves Mir).
More than 180,000 copies of the new one have been sold
since the book’s publication in 1999, and rights have
been sold thus far to Hungary (Osiris). See publisher
Atlas for rights.
Meanwhile,
divine intervention gets a sly political spin as Argentina
wakes up to A Day in the Life of God, a sort
of theological farce from journalist and historian Martín
Caoparrós. In this irreverent story, God, in her
feminine incarnation, can never understand the beings
she has created. Following a sojourn on Earth (in the
various guises of a Theban fighter, a spy in Rome, and
Voltaire’s confessor), she takes matters into her own
hands, with much metaphysical fallout. The 44-year-old
Caoparrós was co-author of the acclaimed three-volume
work The Will, which roiled the debate over Argentina’s
“dark years” during the military regime of the 1970s.
Caoparrós has lived in Paris, Madrid, and New York,
and is now filming his cosmopolitan capers for Argentine
television. Though the new book has slipped off the
list this month, it has about 7,000 copies in print,
which our source assures us “is very promising given
the present economic circumstances of our country.”
Rights have been sold only in Spain (Seix Barral).
See Mónica Herrero at the Guillermo Schavelzon
agency in Buenos Aires.
Lastly,
a note from Germany, where the journalist Ildikó
von Kürthy is back with a vengeance in her second
novel, Fluttering Heart. A seemingly carefree
couple of two years ram the shoals of disaster when
Amelie hears a voicemail message meant for Philipp’s
ears only. The jilted gal-pal douses philandering Philipp’s
silk suits with red wine and promptly hits the road:
“She is out for revenge. Maybe even sex.” Look out,
Hamburg. The author’s first book, Moonshine Duty,
sold 240,000 copies and was published in Norway, the
Netherlands, Korea, and Hungary. The new one has 50,000
copies in print, and no foreign rights have been sold
as yet. See Ariane Fink at the Greenburger
agency for rights.
