Hailed as
the Dutch-European postwar generation’s answer to John
Irving, the popular Netherlands writer Leon de
Winter has scored that mega-coup all scribblers
secretly dream about: his own film starring Burt
Reynolds. Cued up for its theatrical première in
October at the Netherlands Film Festival, de
Winter’s dark comedy The Hollywood Sign tells
the tale of three washed-up Hollywood heroes (played
by Reynolds, Rod Steiger, and Tom Berenger)
who hatch a scheme to steal a bunch of cash from a Las
Vegas casino in order to finance their comebacks. Though
the film has gotten a few rocky reviews — “a bit too
‘Scooby Doo’”, one critic sniffed — the author’s on
a roll, as his latest novel, God’s Gym, has just
hit the Dutch bestseller list with its tale of a father’s
helpless love for his 17-year-old daughter after she
dies at the hands of an American karate champion named
“Godzilla.” The book explores an unlikely friendship
between the two men, which takes on symbolic significance
as “God” converts to Judaism. De Winter, who was born
in 1954 as the son of Netherlands Jews, has been thrust
into the ranks of Paul Auster and Philip Roth,
and he took home this year’s Welt Literature Prize
for his “humorously drawn anti-heroes” and literary
output “as complex as it is exciting.” Since its June
release, God’s Gym has sold over 60,000 copies
in the Netherlands, and rights have been sold to Germany,
where the Swiss-based Diogenes will publish this
spring. English rights to two of the author’s novels,
Sokolow’s Universe (about Russian Jews, the Gulf
War, and space travel) and Zionoco (on the spiritual
journey of a tippling Manhattan Rabbi), have just been
sold to Welcome Rain. As for The Hollywood
Sign, US and UK rights are up for grabs. See Diogenes
for all rights queries.
Also in
Holland, Amsterdam native Kees van Beijnum turned
up a pearl or two when he chose Nam Kee, one of the
oldest Chinese restaurants in Amsterdam’s fabled red-light
district, as the backdrop for his fifth and latest novel.
Said to be “burning with passion” and “a novel with
a real backbone,” Oysters at Nam Kee is the story
of Berry Kooyman, an eighteen-year-old high school student
with a double life, whom critics call “a Huckleberry
Finn who has lost his innocence.” From his delinquent
friends he hides his affluent family life on a mansion-lined
street, and from his respectable, middle-class family
he hides his hooligan pals. When a bewitching dancer
becomes his confidante, however, he can’t tell the pearls
from the swine. With 53,000 copies in print, Oysters
at Nam Kee has sparked heavy interest among teenagers,
and a film version is set to première September 5. Rights
for this book and the author’s earlier work The Archives
(an “ingeniously constructed, intriguing novel”
about a rootless, unemployed philosophy graduate living
in a poor Amsterdam neighborhood) have been sold to
Germany (DVA) and are available from Nijgh
& Van Ditmar. And lastly in Holland, it’s time
for our yearly back-to-school disclaimer: Among the
top 15 titles this month, no less than 7 are those perennial
Prisma dictionaries, with English-Dutch, Dutch,
and, Dutch-English taking slots 3,4, and 5 (a slightly
poorer showing than last year, when the Dutch dictionary
surpassed all English-related titles on the list). While
lexicographers everywhere are popping champagne corks,
the news is actually just a reminder of the start of
classes for Dutch students.
In Sweden,
the Second World War saga of Kerstin Ekman’s
Wolf Skin trilogy continues apace, with the latest
installment, The Last String, following Hillevi
Hlavarsson’s now adult daughter Myrtle as she leaves
Blackwater for Stockholm with a burning little secret
in her valise. Thus begins a journey stretching from
Stockholm to Oslo via the Nordic mountain landscape,
and from Värmland to Venice, but always keeping the
homeland front and center. Ekman’s series has been praised
as a “modern-day epic” and a “rich reading experience
[that] deserves a large public.” This second volume
has already sold 78,000 copies, no surprise as Ekman
is one of the most honored Swedish literary figures
of the last 50 years, and became a member of the Swedish
Academy of Arts and Letters in 1978. (She was one
of three members who resigned in a huff when the Academy
declined to issue a strong statement of support for
Salman Rushdie in 1989.) Rights to the series
have been sold in Germany (Piper), Norway (Aschehoug),
Denmark (Gyldendal), Italy (Il Saggiatore),
and Holland (Prometheus), but US and UK rights
are available for all of her books, notably The Last
String and Time Before Time (a fable-like
story à la Tolkien). See the Linda Michaels Agency
for rights.
In Greece,
Lena Divani breaks out with Singular Form,
a novel spanning both generations and social strata
as it tracks the fate of two orphaned children, Aris
and Ira. The book opens in the summer of 1960 in Volos,
a port city in eastern Greece, and moves on to the present
day as the children, now adults, have moved to other
parts of the globe. Aris starts out as an unkempt boy
oppressed by his overbearing mother, while his low-paid
father abandons his son’s life forever. On the other
hand, Ira is a child of extremely wealthy means who
gets ditched as her socialite parents find themselves
too preoccupied with sashaying about town. In their
mutual attempts to clarify the secrets of their past,
the two children prove themselves scarred but unbroken
survivors of their own homes. The 47-year-old Divani
was born in Volos and is now Professor of Balkan and
Greek Foreign Policy at the Law School of Athens, and
her earlier novel The Women of Her Life was published
in Spain by Alfaguara. All rights are open for
the new one; contact Maria Fakinou of Kastaniotis.
And wings
are vigorously flapping all over Spain as satirical
writer and journalist Alfonso Ussía hits the
list with Carpe Diem: Confessions of a Bar Chicken.
A vociferous opinion columnist for ABC and Time
magazine, Ussía has warmed the cockles of his compatriots
with this picaresque chronicle of a certain Alonso de
Llodio Muñoz-Dry, an arrogant sophisticate from Madrid
who proclaims himself a “hybrid of fern and rush.” As
it turns out, the confessions of Muñoz-Dry bear a striking
resemblance to Ussía’s encounters with current members
of Spain’s social set, and consequently, we’re told,
the 54-year-old Ussía has been offered more than a few
bribes in recent months. Call him the Spanish P.G.
Wodehouse. All rights are available from Ediciones
B.
