Going Swimmingly
Dawn Dives In Down Under, Mathur Rollicks In India, and Enquist Writes Rx for Germany
Making a defiant splash in Australia this month is the bluntly subtitled Dawn: One Hell of a Life, the self-told tale of Australian swimming legend Dawn Fraser, who was the first athlete in the world to win the same event at three successive Olympic Games — the 100-meter freestyle. Billed in the press as an “outlaw” and “party-girl,” the feisty Fraser was banned from competition for 10 years after she refused to wear the official swimsuit (“I was falling out at the bottom whenever I bent over,” she explained) and was arrested for stealing an Olympic flag, effectively retiring her after the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. As she later groused, “If I were swimming today, I’d be pretty close to a billionaire.” After hanging up her swimsuit, however, the former freestyler dove into politics — the publicity folks called it a “remarkable comeback from publican to politician” — and was elected to the New South Wales parliament in 1988. Revered now more than ever in Australia, Fraser weathered a series of tabloid-style setbacks, including the death of her mother in a car accident while Dawn was at the wheel. A first print-run of 65,000 copies is vanishing from bookstores, with customers said to be lugging out five copies at a time. The publisher has gone back to press, and we’re told only New Zealand rights have been sold, leaving all other foreign rights, including the US, up for grabs from Hodder Headline in Australia.
Meanwhile, a film tie-in calls a smash hit back to center stage in India this month, where The Inscrutable Americans by Anurag Mathur won praise upon its initial publication in 1991 as a “two-way satire” skewering both American and Indian cultures. Now in its 19th printing, the “earthy, though ribald” story follows the awkward cultural immersion of protagonist Gopal, described as a “hick from an obscure Indian village called Jajau where his family runs a hair oil factory.” Gopal’s year-long visit to America as a chemical engineering student quickly turns riotous (he drinks 37 cans of Coca-Cola on the incoming flight alone), and the slapstick goes into overdrive as Gopal (no doubt a riff on Bhopal) tangles with “beef, beer, and racism” on his quest for that ultimate American commodity: sex. As one reviewer put it, the book “had me smiling on page one, giggling on page two, and laughing out loud by page three, and I didn’t stop there.” As for the film, directed by Chandra Siddartha, one reviewer lamented that “the camera-work is horrendous” but lauded the feature as a “marvelous attempt.” Mathur’s other novels include Making a Minister Smile and Scenes from an Executive’s Life, the latter said to be a study of the typical northern Indian male who finds fame and fortune at a tender age but has not a clue about life. A new novel is expected next year. Contact Renuka Chatterjee at Rupa (via HarperCollins India).
In Canada, poet Michael Redhill’s first novel Martin Sloane has hit pay dirt (though it’s no longer in the top ten), painting a portrait of a “ferociously intelligent” young woman who is inspired by the constructions of an artist named Martin Sloane (who himself is modeled on the reclusive American artist Joseph Cornell and his eccentric boxed assemblages). Praised as “exquisitely crafted” and “remarkably assured,” the book explores the metaphor of the box as it unravels protagonist Jolene’s obsession with the older artist — and her profound sense of loss after he gets up one night and disappears. The 34-year-old Redhill, who serves as managing editor of Brick magazine, is also seeing a book of poems published this year called Light-crossing (House of Anansi), along with a reprint of his 1993 collection Lake Nora Arms. US rights to the new novel have been sold to Little, Brown for publication in 2002, but foreign rights are available. See agent Ellen Levine.
Cartoonist Roberto Fontanarrosa hits Argentina this month with I’ll Tell You More. Translations are a bit dicey, we’re told, as the author pastiches everything from Reader’s Digest to Scientific American, with a bit of García Márquez thrown in for good measure. Fontanarrosa, who was born in 1944, has published more than 60 books since 1979, including three novels and 10 collections of short stories. His books of graphic humor have been translated in Italy and Brazil, and a whopper of an anthology is under discussion in China. I’ll Tell You More has sold 10,000 copies in two months (a feat for Argentina) and all foreign rights are open, as they are for the author’s Best Seller, The World Was in Error, and La Gansada, says Daniel Divinsky at Ediciones de la Flor.
Sweden’s powerhouse Per Olov Enquist has prescribed 50,000 copies of his latest novel The Royal Physician’s Visit to cure all ailments at bookstores throughout Germany, where the book hits the list this month. Enquist’s first novel since the blow-out Captain Nemo’s Library of 1991, the historical tale is set in Denmark in the 18th century and tells the story of the mad King Christian, his young queen, and the royal physician, one Dr. Struensee. Alas, the German doctor implicated himself in a love triangle with the queen and was hung, drawn, and quartered. The book moved one swooning critic to write that “the erotic scenes are among the most beautiful I have read in modern Swedish literature.” Originally published in 1999, the novel won Sweden’s prestigious August Prize, and translation rights have been sold to 19 countries, including the US, where Overlook will publish in November. But take note: Enquist also has a forthcoming novel, set to be published in Sweden this September. Over 75,000 copies of the new one have been sold in Enquist’s home country, and bidding in Spain was just concluding at press time. See Agneta Markås at Norstedts.
And while on the subject of Sweden’s heavy hitters, the artist formerly known as the “Maigret of the ’90s” is back in action. Håkan Nesser hits the lists with the tersely titled The Swallow, the Cat, the Rose, Death, which is the ninth volume in the Van Veeteren crime series. The book has sold nearly 53,000 copies, and deals with the exploits of police in Maardam, although, as one riled-up reviewer noted, “I shall not talk too much about the intrigues of the plot; you just have to read the book, by which I really mean have to!!”. We’re told Maria Rejt of Macmillan UK has recently acquired four of Nesser’s titles, which marks the author’s first publication in English. All together, the cunning crime maestro has sold 850,000 copies in Sweden — not counting the 100,000 copies per title that Bertelsmann unloads in Germany — and is translated in 13 languages. See agent Linda Michaels for rights.
