International
Fiction Bestsellers
She's Got Game
Gablé's Bold Move in Germany, Forest Fling in
Holland, And Spain's Answer to Umberto Eco
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (NOVEMBER 2003)
Move
over, Monopoly. Board game junkies worldwide
are in for a surprise this month as author and former
university lecturer in Medieval Studies Rebecca Gablé’s
quirky novel The Settlers of Catan hits stores
and the German bestseller list. The book — based on
one of the most popular board games in Germany, which
is also distributed to a fanatical following in the
US — details the exploits of a group of medieval settlers
in the northern village of Elasund who are forced to
do battle with a horde of marauders hell-bent on rape,
pillage, and plunder. In the year 850, the survivors,
including brothers Candamir and Osmund, head for the
high seas in search of a new home, collecting a shipwrecked
Christian missionary along the way, and settling on
the uninhabited island of Catan, located near Scotland
and known only from legend up to that point. Conflict
sparks as the brothers fight one another for power.
We’re not revealing too much to say that one brother
embraces Christianity and eventually leaves Catan (sequel,
anyone?).
We’re told the board game’s creator approached Gablé
to write the novel, and though the game is not entirely
specific about time and place, both author and creator
agreed on a Viking-like setting in mythical locales.
Bob Carty, Director of Sales for Mayfair Games,
which holds worldwide English language rights for the
game, reports that over 8 million copies of The Settlers
of Catan and its family of products have been sold worldwide
(spinoffs include The Settlers of the Stone Age, The
Seafarers of Catan, and The Kids of Catan, which is
scheduled for US release this month). US sales of the
game have increased every year since its release in
1995 and are up 60% over last year (Carty expects the
same trend to continue for at least the next decade).
The game has also hit stores in Russia and Japan, and
rumor has it that an edition featuring US historical
scenarios is in the works. This is Gablé’s third historical
novel set in the high middle ages, and all have been
bestsellers. Gablé’s debut, Fortuna’s Smile,
has just reached the half-million mark as a paperback.
Agent Michael Meller will be selling US rights
to the book in December.
Speaking of games, the 49th installment of Children’s
Book Week opened last month in Holland in a style
reminiscent of the Grimm Brothers, as some 90%
of Dutch primary schools, bookshops, and libraries pushed
books set in forests, as well as nonfiction titles dealing
with trees and other such silvan settings. Author Francine
Oomen and illustrator Michael Dudok de Wit
kicked off the week, which is sponsored by the Collective
Propaganda for the Dutch Book (CPNB), with an appearance
at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Holland’s biggest
national park, where they unveiled a series of tree
huts which they designed with the help of architect
Diederik Dam and interior designer Piet Hein
Eek. Oomen’s book How to Survive a Broken Heart,
chosen as this year’s gift book (it’s given as a gift
by bookshops to anyone who bought a minimum of €9.99
worth of children’s books), had a print run of 368,000
copies. Dudok de Wit, who won the Golden Apple
award at the 19th Biennial of Illustrations in Bratislava
earlier this year, created the picture book Four
Small Beavers in the Night especially for the Book
Week celebration. With a first print run of 115,000,
and a special sale price of €2.25, the book continues
to fly off shelves. Stay tuned for news on next year’s
Children’s Book Week, as plans are in the works for
an even more extravagant 50th anniversary celebration.
Contact Agnes Vogt at the CPNB for more on the
Book Week selections.
In Spain, computer hacker and technology entrepreneur
Arnau Queralt races against time to find a cure for
a mysterious illness that has left his brother in a
coma in Matilde Asensi’s latest novel to hit
the Spanish bestseller list, The Lost Origin.
Accompanied by his cronies Marc and Lola, Arnau sojourns
through time, uncovering answers to some of mankind’s
greatest mysteries, including Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
and the true role of the Spanish in the conquest of
America, as he travels to the heart of a lost Inca civilization
in the ruins of Twianacu in the Amazon jungle. Asensi
is said to have revolutionized the adventure novel just
as “Umberto Eco shook the foundations of the
historical novel with The Name of the Rose.”
All rights are available from Cristina Mora at
Planeta.
In a more sober historical mode, immigrants “live free
and die like waves” in Senegalese-born author Fatou
Diome’s meditation on exile and the immigrant
experience in The Belly of the Atlantic, which
catapults to the top of the French list this month.
Salie has emigrated to France, and her brother dreams
of reuniting with her there, envisioning a promised
land where Senegalese footballers achieve fame and refugees
ward off their tragic destinies. Salie struggles to
reveal to him the dark side of immigration, including
the expectations of those left behind and the contrasting
destinies of people seized by the tide of sadness that
overwhelms the exiled. It’s almost too much to bear,
yet Diome explores the irresistible call of “the elsewhere”
and the strength of those fated to live as outsiders
both at home and abroad. “Immigration is the object
of a thousand clichés,” one critic writes. “In one novel,
Fatou Diome sweeps them all away.” The book is currently
under auction in Holland. US rights are available from
Lucinda Karter at the French Publishers Agency.
As an addendum to last month’s coverage of the Czech
and Slovak markets, Jaroslav Cisar’s newest findings
reveal a dynamic growth in the quantity of titles translated
from Slovak to Czech in the past year, which have increased
fourfold from 32 to 116 titles. Cisar infers that this
is a result of diminishing hard feelings between the
two countries. There’s hope yet.
Finally, an extended note on the headline-grabbing German
nonfiction bestseller list: As reported elsewhere, the
venerable Piper Verlag is tuning into a tide
of anti-American sentiment in Germany, with five current
bestsellers in Der Spiegel that are critical
of Bush and his cronies, including three by Michael
Moore: Stupid White Men, which was
published there six months ago and has already sold
about 1.2 million copies; Downsize This, which
has sold about 300,000 copies; and Dude, Where’s
My Country?, set for release this month with a 200,000
first printing. Rounding off the list are several other
fiery tracts, including what critics are calling French
author Emmanuel Todd’s “provocative…analysis
from a European point of view,” USA World Power:
An Obituary (100,000 sold and counting), and perhaps
most controversial of all, the conspiracy theory–ridden
book written by Germany’s former Federal Minister for
Research, 66-year-old Andreas von Bülow, entitled
The CIA and the 11th of September: International
Terror and the Role of the Secret Services. Von
Bülow’s book, which has sold 80,000 copies since its
release in July, includes his assertions that there
were no plane remains found at the Pentagon (ditto on
the field in Pennsylvania), and that al Qaeda was in
no way responsible for the attacks. As polls show, more
than 50% of Germans believe that the CIA and Bush knew
in advance about 9/11, but grimly stayed the course
in order to create a spectacular, Pearl Harbor–like
justification to invade Iraq. Since another 19% of Germans
are convinced that Bush and the CIA actually planned
the attack, it is no surprise that a title even as controversial
as von Bülow’s would find an eager audience in Germany.
So would it sell in the US?
“To
be honest, interest is not that big at the moment,”
reports Piper Rights Manager Nicole Leppin. So
far the book has been submitted in the US and is also
being considered by publishers in the Netherlands, France,
Italy, and Spain, some of whom only received copies
of the book at Frankfurt. (Out of sheer curiosity, we’ve
consulted a few US publishers who would have no problem
publishing this subject matter in principle, but who
are not interested in this book in particular.) Responding
to the quiet response from US publishers, Leppin simply
noted that the book reflects one point of view, “and
not everybody wants to share this point of view. Next
year, maybe there will be another kind of approach.”
Moreover, the release in Germany was tied to the second
anniversary of 9/11, and Leppin remarked that it would
be difficult for foreign publishers to attract the same
media mayhem if the book were published at any other
time of the year.
Recently, many of von Bülow’s hypotheses were debunked
on German television, but he’s simply swatted aside
the criticism. Leppin adds that there has been a huge
response from the public and the press — both positive
and negative — and the difference between the sharply
critical reception of the book and the huge public thirst
for it is striking. “Sales haven’t suffered, even with
all of the criticism he’s received on German television,”
Leppin says. The blistering attacks, she adds, may have
even helped to stoke sales further.
Contact Nicole Leppin at Nicole.Leppin@piper.de.
©2003
Publishing Trends
