Dictators’ Desserts
Trujillo’s Dominican Feast and Franco’s Fall in Spain, Plus Cremer Redux in Holland
Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa conquers lists in both Spain and Argentina with The Goat’s Feast, a novel that’s captivated critics (it “makes one’s flesh creep,” one wrote admiringly) and has been hailed as a revival of Vargas Llosa’s best literary modus operandi: his sprawlingly complex “development novel.” Detailing the Dominican dictatorship of Leonidas Trujillo (nicknamed “The Goat”), the new book examines Trujillo’s 31-year reign of terror through the eyes of Urania Cabral, a famous lawyer living in the US who returns to Santo Domingo to face her father, who had bequeathed her to Trujillo when she was a young girl in order to ingratiate himself with the dictator. When Trujillo’s attempted rape of Urania failed, however, her father fell from favor and the girl was banished from the island. The Goat’s Feast is described as an arduous documentary work in the literary tradition of the “dictator’s novel,” constructed “with the precision of a clockmaker laying siege to reality.” FSG will publish in the US, and other rights have been sold to France (Gallimard), Germany (Surhkamp), Italy (Einaudi), Portugal (Dom Quixote), and Brazil (Siciliano). See the Carmen Balcells agency for rights.
Dictatorship also rears its head in a novel that popped up on the Spanish list last month, The Agony of the Dragon by Juan Luis Cebrián. The book is a “history of a world coming apart,” specifically Spain under Franco, that is explored through the author’s personal memory of the Franco regime and its decline, as well as through Cebrián’s sharp journalistic lens. The book is said to be the first volume of an ambitious trilogy about the generation that brought democracy to Spain. Cebrián was born in Madrid in 1944, and was a founding editor of El Pais from 1976 to 1988. More than 40,000 copies of the new work have been sold in Spain, with rights still available from agent Antonia Kerrigan in Barcelona.
Also in Spain, Lesbian Lover, by the 83-year-old José Luis Sampedro, has been rocking the charts — and seriously updating the mucho macho “latin lover” paradigm — with an ardent romance in which a woman’s desire to meet a non-sexist male is fulfilled by a man who happens to be a fetishist and enjoys submission. The book has been described as an “awe-inspiring” text that is “completely divorced from the repressive sexual education which is prevalent” in Spanish society. The author’s motto? “Love, and do whatever you like.” No foreign deals have been reported as yet; contact the Carmen Balcells agency.
Cataclysms of a different sort are quaking France this month, where Baldassare’s Odyssey details events in that pre-apocalyptic year of 1665. Everyone, of course, is anxiously awaiting the dawn of 1666, predicted in the Book of Apocalypse as the world’s grand finale. Hero Baldassare is a skeptical rare book dealer in what would be present-day Lebanon who sets out to forage for a book that’s been damned in Muslim scripture. Lover Marta tags along for the adventure, which ends up in London by way of Chios and Genoa, and includes plenty of blockbuster murders, storms, betrayals, and even the Great Fire of London — but nary an apocalypse. Rights have thundered out to the UK (Harvill), Italy (Bompiani), Greece (Oceanida), Norway (Pax), and Turkey (Yapi Kredi), among other lands. See Grasset for details.
Elsewhere in France, bondage abounds in Philippe Djian’s new novel Vers Chez les Blancs (it’s untranslatable, according to his French publisher). The book details the exploits of a bitter, washed-up writer — whom critics have compared to Djian himself — who distracts himself by arranging sexual encounters for a younger, more successful and fashionable writer. The old lion eventually has an affair with the other man’s wife, and pornographic playtime ensues as our “Leporello of letters” indulges. See Gallimard for rights.
A revival has hit Holland, where the picaresque novel based on the life of artist and one-time enfant terrible Jan Cremer is back on the charts after 37 years. I Jan Cremer was published to critical revulsion in 1963, when literary watchers called the brash young Cremer vulgar, immoral, and even fascist as he “cocks a snook” at bourgeois society in a “raucous, roaring, bawdy, imaginative” look at the weaknesses and conceits of himself and his fellow-men. Cremer went on to become a respected painter and, incidentally, is still involved in humanitarian projects at Unesco, Unicef, and The Red Cross. Recently reissued in a jubilee edition, the book has been translated in 12 languages and published in 30 countries; rights are with Sterling Lord Literistic.
Also in Holland, sportswriter Jan Mulder tackles the charts with Victories and Defeats, the first book of a two-volume collection of articles and columns he’s contributed to newspapers and magazines over the years. Mulder, who together with Remco Campert writes a daily column on page one of the major Dutch paper De Volkskrant, has been called “the greatest column writer on sports in the Netherlands,” and wins celeb status for his weekly appearances on the popular Dutch talk show Barend & Van Dorp. Volume two is due out in October. See De Bezige Bij for rights.
In Italy, The Irresistible Glamor of Time has been stopping watches everywhere with its accessible exploration of the mystical and scientific foundations of temporality. This nonfiction essay is written by the acclaimed scientist Antonino Zichichi, who teaches physics at the University of Bologna and made a splash last year with Why I Believe in Him Who Made the World, which has sold more than 120,000 copies in Italy (rights to which are handled by Linda Michaels). The new book traces the philosophic and theoretical dimensions of time from the resurrection of Christ to atomic clocks. No foreign deals have yet been made; contact Pietro Formenton at Il Saggiatore.
Of note in Australia, Huckstepp: A Dangerous Life is an investigative novel — “part true-crime and part biography” — of charismatic Sydney crusader Sallie-Anne Huckstepp, who was found strangled in Centennial Park in 1986. Five years earlier, she had accused New South Wales detectives of murdering her lover and quickly ended up on any number of hit-lists, none of which kept her from dallying with Sydney’s underworld. The book tracks police corruption and takes a hard look at the criminal justice industry as it probes Huckstepp’s untimely death. Rights are available for all countries other than Australia and New Zealand; see Cathy Perkins at Australian Literary Management.
