Barbarians at the Gate
French Success for Harnum, Boo-Hoo from Sweden, and Mortier Back on Tap in Holland
With international lists seemingly locked in place, we cast a glance at a couple of interesting, if less remunerative, deals this month. First off, US agent Rosalie Siegel reports that she has started selling to so-called regional publishers — presumably as the larger ones take fewer and fewer risks as the economy slows. A recent case in point is Robert Harnum’s Exile in the Kingdom. Narrated by a seventeen-year-old boy living with a deadbeat mom and an estranged father, the basketball star one day acquires a gun and starts a rampage at school — by now a familiar story in this country. The first sale via France’s Mary Kling was to Hachette, which published the title in 1999 as La Dernière Sentinelle, and whose Canadian subsidiary also published in Montreal. This led to a movie option from Canadian production company Max Films (best known in the US for this reporter’s favorite movie, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire). Which led to the rights being acquired in the US for Fall ’01 publication by Phil Pochoda’s Hardscrabble Press, associated with the University Press of New England. Siegel describes the novel as intense, powerful, and sober in the fashion of Camus’ The Stranger. The agent reports she will shortly go out with the author’s second novel, The Siege of Innocence.
Back to this month’s lists, Bonniers overwhelms Sweden with six titles, one of which is Miss Priss and Her Career, an illustrated book that takes a humorous look at the life and demands of a spirited working woman. Miss Priss knows that the important thing is, of course, to become somebody important. A nuclear physicist, a film director, or a Manhattan designer, anything as long as you get the Nobel Prize before you’re twenty-five. But what if, somewhere between the latest issue of Glamour and the Employment Service, you’ve lost your determination? Miss Priss is both an accurate spoof on careerism and a touching tale about the fear of not having what it takes. Author Joanna Rubin Dranger received the Swedish Illustrators’ Award for 2000; her earlier work Miss Scaredy-Cat and Love has been sold to Norway, Germany, and Finland, while Miss Priss has been sold to Norway so far. See agent Linda Michaels for US rights.
On a few further notes in Sweden, “a city of chaos and turbulence” awaits in Maja Lundgren’s Pompeii. Set in 78–79 AD, the year before the catastrophic earthquake, the work has painted a picture of a time and a place that was equally bawdy, humorous, moving, and real, while tending inexorably toward its doom. See Linda Michaels for US rights. And watch out for Boo Hoo: A Dot-com Story from Concept to Catastrophe, from the Swedish co-founders of the most famous dot-com disaster Boo.com. Ernst Malmsten and Kajsa Leander, writing with WSJ Europe journalist Erik Portanger, create a tale to be published this fall by Random House (UK) business books that’s a pacey, glamorous business thriller. Set to do big business in the UK with a huge serial deal in place, this one’s being pitched as “barbarians at the gate for the dot-com age.” See Gillon Aitken Associates for rights.
Neighboring Holland, meanwhile, is exercising open trade in translations with England, with an English first novel by Santa Montefiore making an appearance. Set mainly in the Argentinian campo, Meet Me Under the Ombu Tree is a novel of illicit and forbidden love. Its central heroine, Sofia, is a spoilt and spirited tomboy — a Scarlett O’Hara of her times — and loved by all around her, except her own mother, Anna, who is tortured by jealousy and a sense of inadequacy. When Anna discovers Sofia has embarked on a passionate relationship which will bring shame on the families involved, she exiles her for over twenty years. Book club France-Loisirs printed “masses and masses” of copies prior to trade publication by Belfond, according to the agent. Rights have also been acquired in Germany, Italy, and Estonia, though are yet to be snapped up Stateside. The author’s name first became familiar for being sister of the more famous Tara Palmer-Tompkinson, London’s It-girl of the nineties, but Santa’s reputation as a writer has been quietly growing. Her second novel, The Butterfly Box, is an epic saga of love and metamorphosis, and will also be published by Hodder, due out next year. For translation rights, see Linda Shaughnessy at AP Watt; for US rights see Jo Frank at same.
Holland, or rather Meulenhoff, has meanwhile made a two-book deal with Harvill for the novels of Erwin Mortier. The first, Marcel, which received tremendous critical attention, will be published this fall in the UK. It is a novel about a child’s growing awareness of the secret at the heart of his family. A ten-year-old boy lives alone with his grandmother in a Flemish village. Among the photographs his grandmother cherishes is a portrait of a boy named Marcel, who died young and far away. How did he die? The little boy is determined to find out. Standaard der Letteren declared the book to be “a brilliant novel, full of nostalgia, the bitter history of Flemish collaboration, and hilarious humour.” Rights were sold by Meulenhoff to France (Pauvert) and Germany (Suhrkamp). The second novel by Mortier, My Second Skin, has just entered the Dutch top ten. Also written through the eyes of a boy, the story is about the gently growing love of one boy for another at school, the pain of youth and growth, and ultimately loss. Only German rights have sold for My Second Skin; US rights to both novels are available from Harvill; contact Barbara Schwepcke.
In France, Albin Michel expects Didier van Cauwelaert’s The Apparition to be his English-language breakthrough. It details the exploits of Nathalie, a young ophthalmologist, who is called upon by the Vatican to examine an image of the Virgin that appeared miraculously on the tunic of an Aztec Indian in the early 16th century. Political maneuverings in Vatican City reluctantly involve Nathalie in the battle between science, politics, and the Church. As her own convictions are called into doubt, she ultimately finds meaning in her life. A consistent seller (about 100,000 copies) in his homeland, van Cauwelaert’s 1994 novel One-Way Ticket won the Prix Goncourt, and film rights to his last novel The Education of a Fairy were sold to Miramax despite there being no translation deal for the book. His translation of the classic Marcel Aymé play, The Walker-Through-Walls, will soon be performed on Broadway. Contact Lisa Rounds at the French Publisher’s Agency for rights.
