The Flying Dutchmen
De Winter Does Hollywood, Holland’s Huck Finn,
And Bar Chickens Cluck in Spain
Hailed as the Dutch-European postwar generation’s answer to John Irving, the popular Netherlands writer Leon de Winter has scored that mega-coup all scribblers secretly dream about: his own film starring Burt Reynolds. Cued up for its theatrical première in October at the Netherlands Film Festival, de Winter’s dark comedy The Hollywood Sign tells the tale of three washed-up Hollywood heroes (played by Reynolds, Rod Steiger, and Tom Berenger) who hatch a scheme to steal a bunch of cash from a Las Vegas casino in order to finance their comebacks. Though the film has gotten a few rocky reviews — “a bit too ‘Scooby Doo’”, one critic sniffed — the author’s on a roll, as his latest novel, God’s Gym, has just hit the Dutch bestseller list with its tale of a father’s helpless love for his 17-year-old daughter after she dies at the hands of an American karate champion named “Godzilla.” The book explores an unlikely friendship between the two men, which takes on symbolic significance as “God” converts to Judaism. De Winter, who was born in 1954 as the son of Netherlands Jews, has been thrust into the ranks of Paul Auster and Philip Roth, and he took home this year’s Welt Literature Prize for his “humorously drawn anti-heroes” and literary output “as complex as it is exciting.” Since its June release, God’s Gym has sold over 60,000 copies in the Netherlands, and rights have been sold to Germany, where the Swiss-based Diogenes will publish this spring. English rights to two of the author’s novels, Sokolow’s Universe (about Russian Jews, the Gulf War, and space travel) and Zionoco (on the spiritual journey of a tippling Manhattan Rabbi), have just been sold to Welcome Rain. As for The Hollywood Sign, US and UK rights are up for grabs. See Diogenes for all rights queries.
Also in Holland, Amsterdam native Kees van Beijnum turned up a pearl or two when he chose Nam Kee, one of the oldest Chinese restaurants in Amsterdam’s fabled red-light district, as the backdrop for his fifth and latest novel. Said to be “burning with passion” and “a novel with a real backbone,” Oysters at Nam Kee is the story of Berry Kooyman, an eighteen-year-old high school student with a double life, whom critics call “a Huckleberry Finn who has lost his innocence.” From his delinquent friends he hides his affluent family life on a mansion-lined street, and from his respectable, middle-class family he hides his hooligan pals. When a bewitching dancer becomes his confidante, however, he can’t tell the pearls from the swine. With 53,000 copies in print, Oysters at Nam Kee has sparked heavy interest among teenagers, and a film version is set to première September 5. Rights for this book and the author’s earlier work The Archives (an “ingeniously constructed, intriguing novel” about a rootless, unemployed philosophy graduate living in a poor Amsterdam neighborhood) have been sold to Germany (DVA) and are available from Nijgh & Van Ditmar. And lastly in Holland, it’s time for our yearly back-to-school disclaimer: Among the top 15 titles this month, no less than 7 are those perennial Prisma dictionaries, with English-Dutch, Dutch, and, Dutch-English taking slots 3,4, and 5 (a slightly poorer showing than last year, when the Dutch dictionary surpassed all English-related titles on the list). While lexicographers everywhere are popping champagne corks, the news is actually just a reminder of the start of classes for Dutch students.
In Sweden, the Second World War saga of Kerstin Ekman’s Wolf Skin trilogy continues apace, with the latest installment, The Last String, following Hillevi Hlavarsson’s now adult daughter Myrtle as she leaves Blackwater for Stockholm with a burning little secret in her valise. Thus begins a journey stretching from Stockholm to Oslo via the Nordic mountain landscape, and from Värmland to Venice, but always keeping the homeland front and center. Ekman’s series has been praised as a “modern-day epic” and a “rich reading experience [that] deserves a large public.” This second volume has already sold 78,000 copies, no surprise as Ekman is one of the most honored Swedish literary figures of the last 50 years, and became a member of the Swedish Academy of Arts and Letters in 1978. (She was one of three members who resigned in a huff when the Academy declined to issue a strong statement of support for Salman Rushdie in 1989.) Rights to the series have been sold in Germany (Piper), Norway (Aschehoug), Denmark (Gyldendal), Italy (Il Saggiatore), and Holland (Prometheus), but US and UK rights are available for all of her books, notably The Last String and Time Before Time (a fable-like story à la Tolkien). See the Linda Michaels Agency for rights.
In Greece, Lena Divani breaks out with Singular Form, a novel spanning both generations and social strata as it tracks the fate of two orphaned children, Aris and Ira. The book opens in the summer of 1960 in Volos, a port city in eastern Greece, and moves on to the present day as the children, now adults, have moved to other parts of the globe. Aris starts out as an unkempt boy oppressed by his overbearing mother, while his low-paid father abandons his son’s life forever. On the other hand, Ira is a child of extremely wealthy means who gets ditched as her socialite parents find themselves too preoccupied with sashaying about town. In their mutual attempts to clarify the secrets of their past, the two children prove themselves scarred but unbroken survivors of their own homes. The 47-year-old Divani was born in Volos and is now Professor of Balkan and Greek Foreign Policy at the Law School of Athens, and her earlier novel The Women of Her Life was published in Spain by Alfaguara. All rights are open for the new one; contact Maria Fakinou of Kastaniotis.
And wings are vigorously flapping all over Spain as satirical writer and journalist Alfonso Ussía hits the list with Carpe Diem: Confessions of a Bar Chicken. A vociferous opinion columnist for ABC and Time magazine, Ussía has warmed the cockles of his compatriots with this picaresque chronicle of a certain Alonso de Llodio Muñoz-Dry, an arrogant sophisticate from Madrid who proclaims himself a “hybrid of fern and rush.” As it turns out, the confessions of Muñoz-Dry bear a striking resemblance to Ussía’s encounters with current members of Spain’s social set, and consequently, we’re told, the 54-year-old Ussía has been offered more than a few bribes in recent months. Call him the Spanish P.G. Wodehouse. All rights are available from Ediciones B.
