Staying Alive
Iraqi Exile in Denmark, Czech Band Beats
Persecution,
Chinese Memoir Smuggled to France
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (JUNE 2004)
Defining
the immigrant experience is about as easy as finding
the proverbial needle in a haystack, yet a former Iraqi
citizen now living in Denmark has penned her contribution
to this genre with a “quiet, sad and nevertheless unsentimental
portrayal of [her] new life,” in Late Discoveries, Small
Victories. Duna Ghali moved from Basra to Denmark
more than 10 years ago, and her former life in Iraq
provides the backdrop against which she describes the
almost imperceptible changes in her daily life, along
with her overwhelming sense of isolation and anxiety.
Praised for her avoidance of cliché, Ghali organizes
her book into 22 compact scenes that, though often tense,
contain “brief moments of happiness that burst like
soap bubbles.” She brings scrutiny to the wrenching
experience of relocation and exile, and reimagines the
influence that new surroundings can have on one’s world
view. Ghali has written two other novels in Arabic,
published in Syria (Al-Mada), and this latest
novel will be published in a bilingual edition, which
can be read from the front in Danish and from the back
in Arabic. Contact Ingelise Korsholm at The
Gyldendal Group Agency (Denmark).
Harboring a peculiar aversion to verbs, a French author
writing under the pseudonym Michel Thaler has
set out to do what no author has done before: write
an entire book with no verbs. The 233-page novel, entitled
The Train From Nowhere, incorporates lengthy passages
“filled with florid adjectives in a series of vitriolic
portraits of dislikeable passengers on a train.” Thaler,
who stifles grammar and characterizes the verb as the
“invader, dictator, usurper of our literature,” boldly
declares that he is doing for literature what the Dada
movement and Surrealism did for art. Some wisecracking
critics have made tongue-in-cheek comments about the
lack of action in Thaler’s novel, yet it remains to
be seen whether the book will be as admired as La Disparition,
which Georges Perec wrote in 1969 without using
the letter e (its sequel contained no vowel except e),
and which was valiantly translated into English as A
Void by Gilbert Adair and published in the US
by HarperCollins in 1995. Contact Chrystel
Manfredi-Matringe of Adcan (France).
Also in France, a rare testimony on life in China from
the beginning of the 20th century until the end of the
Cultural Revolution has finally made its way into the
public sphere, thanks to the efforts of a French translator
who studied in China more than 15 years ago. Storm Clouds
Gathering is the autobiography of Chen Ming and
is just as much a metaphor for the history of 20th century
China. Born in 1908, Chen Ming spent his childhood in
the poor northeast province of Shanxi, yet after years
of tireless study, he went on to become a well-respected
professor. A series of regime changes drastically altered
the course of his life, and in 1937, after returning
from two years in England, Chen Ming returned to find
his country at war with Japan. Following the rise of
the Communist Party, he was sent to laogai, the
Chinese gulag, where the horrifying conditions led to
the death of some inmates and the suicides of others.
Forbidden to teach, he took up work as a street sweeper
and was monitored daily by parole officers and forced
to make public confessions. French student and translator
Camille Loivier arrived on the scene in 1988
and a chance encounter with Chen Ming resulted in his
decision to compile his memoirs. Though his writings
were (and still are) banned in China, he met with her
on a regular basis and entrusted her to translate the
book and get it published in France, which involved
smuggling the manuscript out of the country. Still,
the author, who died in 1996, never renounced his country
and reserved his criticism for the communist regime
alone. Rights have been sold to Marsilio (Italy)
and US rights are being offered by Alice Tassel
at the French Publishers’ Agency.
Thirteen-year-old
Fania Schiefer carries quite a burden growing up in
a household full of Holocaust survivors in 1960s Hamburg
in Viola Roggenkamp’s debut novel Family Life.
Her mother’s and grandmother’s lives are shaped by a
world that has “more death than life in it,” and her
family’s tragic past is hardly a distant memory. Fania
and her sister Vera rush home after school every day,
well aware that their mother will be inconsolably anxious
if they are late. At the same time, their overprotective
parents are rarely critical of the girls and their father
even sneaks out in the middle of the night to buy chocolate
to satisfy Fania’s craving for a late-night snack. Drawing
from a Jewish storytelling tradition, as well as her
own experiences growing up half-Jewish in post-war Germany,
Roggenkamp (who was publisher of Die Zeit for
three decades and is still one of the most-respected
journalists in Germany) has been praised for her ability
to evoke simultaneous laughter and tears. In fact, German
television personality and book guru Elke Heidenreich
recently featured the book on her show Lesen!
(Read!), raving, “What is so wonderful is that
she has so much humor.” Rights are available from Elisabeth
Raabe at Arche Verlag (Germany) and have
been sold to Mondadori (Italy). Interest is brewing
in the Netherlands, France, Spain and elsewhere.
A self-proclaimed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde whose interests
run the gamut from books to rock-and-roll, Jaroslav
Císar (who translates the Czech list for PT)
was recently awarded the 4th Annual Miroslav Ivanov
Non-fiction Literature Award for his latest book
Framus Five: Swallowed Words Blues. Named for the famed
Czech author of 29 books that have been translated into
nine different languages, the award is presented by
the Non-fiction Literature Authors’ Club committee
for outstanding original Czech non-fiction literature
published within the past three years. Císar’s latest
book tells the history of one of the most popular Czech
rhythm-and-blues bands, called Framus Five, which
formed back in the 1960s and was plagued by persecution
after the Russian-led invasion of 1968. Lead singer
Michal Prokop and the band were heroes to a generation
and developed quite a following in Poland, too. Inspired
by American rhythm-and-blues, the group sang only in
English until they were prohibited from doing so after
1968. An avid collector of records, Císar’s specialty
is American, British and Canadian rock from the 1950s
through the ’70s. He has also published an encyclopedia
Years of Rock, featuring listings for “golden oldies”
Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Tommy
James & The Shondells, Roy Orbison and
Steppenwolf. For rights queries, contact the
author at jaroslav.cisar@volny.cz.
©2004
Publishing Trends
