With the
world reeling from the 1994 bombings of the Israeli
embassy and the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association
in Buenos Aires, a Moslem scholar and a young and impulsive
journalist join forces to prevent future attacks in
Argentine author Marcos Aguinis’ latest and perhaps
most controversial novel, Assault on Paradise.
Using actual testimony from a New York Times
report suggesting that the Iranian government organized
and carried out the bombings — and then paid Argentina’s
president at the time, Carlos Saúl Menem, $10
million to cover it up — Aguinis, one-time recipient
of the Planeta Prize of Spain, rakes through
the rubble in a bid to denounce those responsible, and
to castigate those who covered up the heinous crime.
Among the ruins of the former embassy, scholar Zacarias
preaches a radically different view of Islam from fundamentalism,
as journalist Tíbori discovers that one of the victims
of the blast is her own sister. Then there’s Dawud,
a suicide bomber who is welcomed with open arms by Mohsen
Rabbani at the Iranian Embassy (the only character
in the book representing a historical figure), and whose
flashbacks to a tragic childhood in Beirut explain the
historical conditions under which his worldview was
forged. Aguinis’ even-handed treatment of characters
on both sides of the struggle is noteworthy, according
to critics, while “terrible facts are brilliantly fictionalized
with psychological depth.” After a first print run of
30,000, a second edition of 10,000 is on tap, and sales
have been made to Spain, Colombia, and Mexico. See Guillermo
Schavelzon at guillermo@
schavelzon.com for rights.
Turning
back the historical clock considerably further, Denmark
is abuzz over young Neils Eskessøn, the ambitious son
of a Jutland farmer, who embarks on a European journey
to advance his education in Hanne Reintoft’s
latest novel, Raven’s Food. We’re in Copenhagen
in 1533, as the death of King Frederik I precipitates
a national assembly of nobility who congregate to choose
a new leader. Tensions soon flare among this “Assemblage
of Excellences,” however, culminating in a civil war
in Denmark that rages between 1534 and 1536. By a strange
set of coincidences, our man Eskessøn lands in Denmark
on the day of the assembly, but soon scoots off on a
secret mission to Sweden, where he meets the love of
his life: the fiery red-head Sidsel. Author Reintoft,
a social counselor best known for her popular public
radio program What Are My Rights and What Are My
Duties? — a Studs Terkel-type show in which
she responds to queries about social issues — chronicles
a darn near epic 40 years of the young couple’s tempestuous
relationship against the backdrop of a nation sundered
by war. In this compendium of horrors, queens are raped,
the poor are starved, and religion is a sop for tyrants.
Foreign rights are wide open from Forum in Denmark.
Meanwhile,
in the third installment of Jens Henrik Jensen’s
ragingly successful thriller trilogy The Wolf in
Banja Luka, CIA agent Jan Jordi Kazanski ransacks
the former Yugoslavia on a bender taut with violence
and drama. The book centers around the hunt for Kurjak
— the Wolf — which is the mythical code name of a highly
influential Serbian underworld figure expected by the
International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague to serve
as a material witness against Slobodan Milosevic
and other Serbian war criminals. Kazanski is pulled
into the hunt for the Wolf when his girlfriend, Ewa
(who arrived on the scene in the first book of the series,
The Shrew of Krakow), has been sent out by the
Tribunal on a secret mission to track the Wolf and disappears
without a trace. Together with an old Serb who also
works for the Hague tribunal, and a woman whose cause
for revenge against the Wolf is a mystery, Kazanski
heads to the Balkans, passing through the picturesquely
war-torn landscapes of Croatia, Kosovo, and Bosnia/Herzegovina,
a journey undertaken by the author himself in 2001.
Rights have been sold to Sweden (Norstedts/Prisma),
Holland (de Geus), and Italy (Rizzoli/Sonzogno),
with international film rights optioned to Nimbus
Film (Denmark). Contact the Leonhardt and Hoier
Literary Agency/Borgen Publishers.
The serial
crime spree continues in Spain this month, as Lorenzo
Silva offers us his most ambitious tale of perennial
adventurer Sergeant Bevilaqua in The Mist and the
Maiden. Entrusted to investigate the death of an
untamed youngster in La Gomera, the Sergeant, along
with his inseparable corporal Chamorro, will try to
clear up a convoluted case in which Juan Luis Gomez
Padilla, a renowned politician on the island, has been
deemed the principal suspect — but absolved by a popular
court in spite of the evidence against him. Sarge puts
Padilla once again in the cross-hairs, but is faced
with a political hornets’ nest and must also quell the
smoldering mistrust among his colleagues as he reopens
a case they had considered to be closed. Winner of Spain’s
most established literary award, the prestigious Premio
Nadal for The Impatient Alchemist (the second
installment of the Bevilaqua trilogy), Silva has now
written twelve novels, three of which are for young
readers, and has been declared “one of the most promising
writers of his generation.” The Mist and the Maiden
has been sold to Italy (Passigli) and France
(Lattès). Other works from the author have been
translated into Russian, and are in the process of being
translated into Greek and German. Contact Laure Merle
d’Aubigné of ACER (Madrid).
Also in
Spain, Maria de la Pau Janer’s novel The Women
in Me summons up the ethereal story of a twentysomething
orphan, Carlota, whose home is haunted by a matriarchal
clan of phantoms: there’s her mother Elisa, who died
under mysterious circumstances at the age of twenty,
and also grandmother Sofia, who lost her life at the
same age during childbirth. Faced with the fear of sharing
their fate, young Carlota embarks on a quest to reconstruct
their lives through stories told by her grandfather,
who is her only surviving relative. Already on its 4th
edition in Spanish with 115,000 copies sold (and with
a Catalan edition on the way), the book has been sold
to Germany (Blanvalet). For rights, see Cristina
Mora of Planeta.
And a final
note: last month we got our wires crossed in our Year-End
International Bestseller List. Contrary to our report,
US rights to bestselling author Luis Verissimo’s
The Lies that Men Tell (which was #10 on our
year-end list) are available from agent Ray-Güde
Mertin in Germany.
