The Travolta Generation
Swingin’ Sweden’s Gardell, Finland’s Eager Readers, And Greece’s Turk in the Garden
One of Scandinavia’s sassiest stand-up comedians drenches himself in “sweaty randiness and lonely searching” this month with A UFO Makes an Entry, a second novel by Jonas Gardell about the star-crossed generation that grew up in the suburban 1970s, weaned on John Travolta and the Sex Pistols. A sort of comedian bildungsroman, the book takes up where Gardell’s earlier volume Growing Up a Comedian left off, with the tortured lives of teenagers Juha and Jenny. As they bump and grind their way through love and rebellion, the tragicomic teens confront a world equally tarnished by skin blemishes, bullies, and nuclear power plants. Possibly the best of Gardell’s “tender yet cruelly accurate” tales to date, this book is said to dexterously juggle bathos, pathos, and polyester — all to the gyrating soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. The 38-year-old Gardell made a promising splash in 1985 with his debut novel The Passion Play, a work about homosexual love, and has gone on to write a number of well-received plays. Rights to the new book have been sold thus far to Norway (Tiden) and Denmark (Tiderne Skifter). See Clara Gustafsson at Norstedts.
In other northern European matters, we’re pleased to introduce our bestseller list from Finland, which debuted last month. A voracious nation of readers, Finland cranks out the second highest number of titles per capita in all of Europe. (Iceland, however, is the top titles-per-capita nation by a long shot.) Though it’s also a nation of short print runs — averaging 4,100 copies for a work of general fiction — we offer a brief overview of the industry to get you oriented. Total book sales in Finland amounted to about $360 million in 1999, with 40% of books sold in bookstores. The heavy hitters among Finnish publishers are WSOY, Otava, Edita, and Tammi, while the only Finnish wholesaler is Kirjavälitys Oy, owned jointly by bookstores and publishers, which has 30,000 titles in stock. Though the bestseller list this month is a rogues’ gallery of usual suspects, recent Finnish gems include Susanne Ringell’s “ABC for grown-ups,” a slim volume with a whopper of a title: It Was Embarrassment that Made Adele Fat. The book offers a mini-story for each letter of the alphabet, and is said to blend linguistics, psychology, and the absurd. As one critic warmly averred, “Female absurdism is something of which we cannot have too much.” See publisher Söderström for rights.
In Germany, literary argonaut Peter Stamm roves through an Uncharted Landscape in his second novel, an “elegy about the futility of life” that unfolds from a small Norwegian port of call above the Arctic Circle. A listless, 28-year-old customs officer named Kathrine boards a Hurtig Route ship called the Polarlys, and the voyage turns into a spiritual trek departing from her drunken first husband and 8-year-old child, and sailing to points unknown amid life’s icy lagoons. Stamm’s 1998 work Agnes was deemed a “fine first novel” recalling Raymond Carver in its stark portrayal of two lovers who meet in the Chicago public library and get terminally tangled when he begins writing a “fictionalized” account of their relationship. Critics called the story “the innermost of a set of Chinese boxes.” The 38-year-old Stamm has been an itinerant freelance writer and journalist who now lives in Switzerland, and his novel Agnes is now published in nine countries, including the UK (Bloomsbury), France (Christian Bourgois), and Spain (Quaderns Crema). Rights to the new one, which is just below the top ten this month, have been sold to Italy (Neri Pozza), with deals imminent in Spain and France. Talk to Marianne Fritsch at the Liepman agency.
Also in Germany, TV and radio sensation Elke Heidenreich has floored even her staunchest admirers with a collection of seven short stories called Turn Your Back on the World. Mournful but leavened with irony, the stories offer elliptical reveries, such as one about a woman who vows to find a former lover 25 years after their week-long affair. The two hook up for a tryst and — wham-bam! — the Berlin Wall kicks the dust. The author’s Nero Corleone (a children’s book illustrated by Quint Buchholz) was published in the US by Viking in 1997, as well as a dozen other countries. The new one has sold over 120,000 copies in Germany, with rights sold only to France thus far. See Susanne Bauknecht at Hanser for rights.
Meanwhile, Greece has been chasing after the Turk in the Garden, an “attractive and atmospheric” new novel by prolific journalist and playwright Yiannis Xanthoulis. The time-twisting plot centers on the 11-year-old son of a gardener who becomes the catalyst in a series of supernatural events — all of which culminate around the garden of an aristocratic éminence grise. Protagonist Ilias deploys his “paranormal abilities” to avenge the death of the old woman’s brother, and soon a 16th-century noble Turk pops in among the dahlias to wreak havoc. Xanthoulis’ novel Dead Liqueur sold 122,000 copies, and was published in Holland (de Geus), Japan (Kodansha), Spain (Seix Barral), and France (Hatier) — though we’re told rights have reverted in France and are now up for grabs. The new one, published in June, has sold more than 25,000 copies, and all rights are open from Maria Fakinou at Kastaniotis.
Also of note in Greece, a brief update on Nikos Themelis (see PT 5/01), whose novel The Search is now up to 70,000 copies sold, while his second effort, The Subversion, has sold 60,000. Critics were wary of Themelis’ alter ego — he’s counselor to the Greek prime minister — but we’re told readers have found The Search a Jamesian mosaic woven from the life of a young man in Asia Minor. Rights have been sold to Germany (Piper), Italy (Crocetti), and Turkey (Dogan Kitap). Meanwhile, The Subversion has been deemed “a highly attractive novel” about the Greek Diaspora, detailed in “perfectly accurate period atmosphere.” See Kedros for rights.
And Australia is atwitter over the latest from Matthew Reilly, whose Area 7 is the young maestro’s fictional look at “America’s most secret base,” an Air Force outpost in the Utah desert. The book recounts a presidential visit to the compound that turns ugly when hostile forces are found inside. Reilly’s earlier efforts Ice Station and Temple were published in eight countries, and the new one has sold 100,000 copies. Rights have been sold to the UK (Macmillan), Germany (Econ), and Holland (Het Spectrum), with publication in the US expected in February from St. Martin’s. See Macmillan UK for rights.
