A Royal Pain
Love Child in Denmark, Going Postal in Greece, and Sweden’s John le Carré
Don’t look now, Fergie, but there’s a new royal nuisance in town: Behold the saucy, 18th-century Danish princess Louise Augusta, whose mug may not have been plastered on the cover of The Sun in her day, but who’s knocking readers silly in Denmark this month as the sultry subject of Maria Helleberg’s bestselling historical novel, Love Child. Louise Augusta (actually the illegitimate daughter of King Christian VII’s personal physician, J.F. Struensee, who later became Prime Minister only to be beheaded for treason), was not only the product of frolicsome passion but was also known for wildly erotic hoedowns with her hubby, Frederik Christian (a.k.a. the Duke of Augustenborg). His bookish, lachrymose demeanor was an unlikely match for her gay spontaneity, but their “difficult yet deeply satisfying” matrimonial life “unexpectedly comes quite close to the idea of equality.” Who knew? Called a “weighty new novel” and “an intense literary experience,” the book delves into this royal relationship while placing Denmark’s love child against a background of political intrigue. The prolific Helleberg has written children’s books, travel accounts, and reviews, and her narrative chops have spanned the fall of Troy as told by Cassandra (in The Prophetess) and a reworking of a 14th-century Swedish rhymed chronicle of King Erik (Like a Plow of Wrath). Her work has been translated in Estonia (Kunst) and Germany (Eichborn), and all rights to the new one are open from Torben Madsen of Denmark’s Samleren Publishers.
Also throwing paternity to the wind in Denmark, a seemingly well-adapted student of medicine stuns her parents with the news of her pregnancy in Anne Marie Løn’s novel Whose Child? Raised in a deeply religious home in Western Jutland, protagonist Bianca steams off to Africa as a volunteer and returns six months later with more questions than answers, the most pressing of which involves the future of her unborn child. The widely published Løn is well known for her 1998 novel The Dance of the Dwarves, a tale of love as told by a 32-year-old midget (the book’s up to 70,000 copies in print), and her 1996 novel The Princesses, the story of a landowner’s two daughters and their turbulent life in early 20th-century Jutland, has sold more than 100,000 copies. Meanwhile the author has pocketed the Bilcher Prize, Egholt Prize, Literature Prize of Weekendavisen, and The Golden Laurels — the latter the annual prize of the Danish booksellers. Rights for The Dance of the Dwarves have been sold in France (Gaïa), Sweden (Anamma), and Germany (Knaus), but rights for the new one, just published last month, are up for grabs. All translation rights for Løn are handled by the Leonhardt & Høier Literary Agency in Denmark.
In Greece, Athenian journalist Stelios Koulojlou’s admonitory title Never Go to the Post Office Alone has been riveting readers with its spotlight on romance and political conspiracy during the twilight of the Soviet Union. Packed with a panoply of intriguing underworld types — a prostitute born in the gulag, a mafia don who hooks up American grooms and Russian brides, and a hardcore Italian communist — the book is based in part on the author’s toil as a political analyst and editor in Greece, and stints as a correspondent in Paris and Moscow, where he’s chronicled the radical changes sweeping the Soviet landscape over the last decade. Behold left-wing American journalist Kevin Danacher, who ripens from ’70s student activist to suspected Soviet agent after a sojourn in Moscow. With the FBI hot on his trail, Danacher’s alibis start to unravel as he explains his involvement in shady dealings of particular interest to American secret services, while also getting firmly entangled with Madlis, the beautiful East German (and suspected KGB agent) who was implicated in the events leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall. (The title derives from Madlis and Danacher’s chance meeting as he waits in line at a Moscow post office.) Called a “fascinating erotic spying thriller,” the book has sold 15,000 copies to date, and rights are available from Oceanida.
Sweden’s own grassy-knoll theory is getting a test-drive this month as Professor of Criminology Leif G.W. Persson roils the conspiratorial waters with Between the Promise of Summer and the Cold of Winter, his novel about the 1986 murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme and the near-fatal wounding of his wife, Lisbet. Hard-drinking criminal investigator Lars Johansson tots up a laundry list of far-flung suspects, including Kurdish activists, Iraqi agents, South African apartheid agitators, and even the CIA. The author, who’s been touted as a cross between Mersey Beat and John le Carré, has just returned to fiction after a 20-year hiatus, and his three previous novels based on the Johansson character (which became blockbuster films in Sweden) have been deemed “seductively racy” and “riveting reading for everyone interested in the dark side of politics and policing.” The new one has 80,000 copies in print, and rights have been sold to Denmark (Modtryk), France (Presses de la Cité), and Italy (Marsilio). Contact Niclas Salomonsson of the Salomonsson Agency.
In Spain, a group of women jailed in Franco’s prisons following the Spanish Civil War have been given their due in Dulce Chacón’s novel The Sleeping Voice. The book follows those Madrilenians who “raise the flag of dignity and courage as the only weapon against humiliation, torture and death,” and who were often summarily shot for their efforts. The haunting literary upshot is that Chacón “has been able to construct a fiction without hardly inventing anything.” With 30,000 copies sold, the book is on submission in France, Italy, Germany, and most of Europe; for US rights, contact the Antonia Kerrigan Literary Agency.
And for what it’s worth, Germany is barking up a storm about Brigitte magazine columnist Elke Heidenreich and her former husband Bernd Schroeder’s new collection of short stories, Rowing Dogs, which has apparently captivated the literary world and their canine pals. The pups referenced in the title are actually part of a bronze sculpture that the authors are said to have stumbled upon in a Parisian flea market. With much post-Frankfurt buzz — and a media-friendly story about an author involved in an intricate Halloween-night love triangle, replete with bizarre costumes — the book has become an instant, 150,000-copy bestseller. Contact Jennifer Lyons at Writers House for US rights and Tanja Howarth in the UK.
