Realpolitik Redux
Aguinis in Argentina, King’s Ransom in Denmark, and Slobo’s Serbian Adventures
With the world reeling from the 1994 bombings of the Israeli embassy and the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association in Buenos Aires, a Moslem scholar and a young and impulsive journalist join forces to prevent future attacks in Argentine author Marcos Aguinis’ latest and perhaps most controversial novel, Assault on Paradise. Using actual testimony from a New York Times report suggesting that the Iranian government organized and carried out the bombings — and then paid Argentina’s president at the time, Carlos Saúl Menem, $10 million to cover it up — Aguinis, one-time recipient of the Planeta Prize of Spain, rakes through the rubble in a bid to denounce those responsible, and to castigate those who covered up the heinous crime. Among the ruins of the former embassy, scholar Zacarias preaches a radically different view of Islam from fundamentalism, as journalist Tíbori discovers that one of the victims of the blast is her own sister. Then there’s Dawud, a suicide bomber who is welcomed with open arms by Mohsen Rabbani at the Iranian Embassy (the only character in the book representing a historical figure), and whose flashbacks to a tragic childhood in Beirut explain the historical conditions under which his worldview was forged. Aguinis’ even-handed treatment of characters on both sides of the struggle is noteworthy, according to critics, while “terrible facts are brilliantly fictionalized with psychological depth.” After a first print run of 30,000, a second edition of 10,000 is on tap, and sales have been made to Spain, Colombia, and Mexico. See Guillermo Schavelzon at guillermo@ schavelzon.com for rights.
Turning back the historical clock considerably further, Denmark is abuzz over young Neils Eskessøn, the ambitious son of a Jutland farmer, who embarks on a European journey to advance his education in Hanne Reintoft’s latest novel, Raven’s Food. We’re in Copenhagen in 1533, as the death of King Frederik I precipitates a national assembly of nobility who congregate to choose a new leader. Tensions soon flare among this “Assemblage of Excellences,” however, culminating in a civil war in Denmark that rages between 1534 and 1536. By a strange set of coincidences, our man Eskessøn lands in Denmark on the day of the assembly, but soon scoots off on a secret mission to Sweden, where he meets the love of his life: the fiery red-head Sidsel. Author Reintoft, a social counselor best known for her popular public radio program What Are My Rights and What Are My Duties? — a Studs Terkel-type show in which she responds to queries about social issues — chronicles a darn near epic 40 years of the young couple’s tempestuous relationship against the backdrop of a nation sundered by war. In this compendium of horrors, queens are raped, the poor are starved, and religion is a sop for tyrants. Foreign rights are wide open from Forum in Denmark.
Meanwhile, in the third installment of Jens Henrik Jensen’s ragingly successful thriller trilogy The Wolf in Banja Luka, CIA agent Jan Jordi Kazanski ransacks the former Yugoslavia on a bender taut with violence and drama. The book centers around the hunt for Kurjak — the Wolf — which is the mythical code name of a highly influential Serbian underworld figure expected by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague to serve as a material witness against Slobodan Milosevic and other Serbian war criminals. Kazanski is pulled into the hunt for the Wolf when his girlfriend, Ewa (who arrived on the scene in the first book of the series, The Shrew of Krakow), has been sent out by the Tribunal on a secret mission to track the Wolf and disappears without a trace. Together with an old Serb who also works for the Hague tribunal, and a woman whose cause for revenge against the Wolf is a mystery, Kazanski heads to the Balkans, passing through the picturesquely war-torn landscapes of Croatia, Kosovo, and Bosnia/Herzegovina, a journey undertaken by the author himself in 2001. Rights have been sold to Sweden (Norstedts/Prisma), Holland (de Geus), and Italy (Rizzoli/Sonzogno), with international film rights optioned to Nimbus Film (Denmark). Contact the Leonhardt and Hoier Literary Agency/Borgen Publishers.
The serial crime spree continues in Spain this month, as Lorenzo Silva offers us his most ambitious tale of perennial adventurer Sergeant Bevilaqua in The Mist and the Maiden. Entrusted to investigate the death of an untamed youngster in La Gomera, the Sergeant, along with his inseparable corporal Chamorro, will try to clear up a convoluted case in which Juan Luis Gomez Padilla, a renowned politician on the island, has been deemed the principal suspect — but absolved by a popular court in spite of the evidence against him. Sarge puts Padilla once again in the cross-hairs, but is faced with a political hornets’ nest and must also quell the smoldering mistrust among his colleagues as he reopens a case they had considered to be closed. Winner of Spain’s most established literary award, the prestigious Premio Nadal for The Impatient Alchemist (the second installment of the Bevilaqua trilogy), Silva has now written twelve novels, three of which are for young readers, and has been declared “one of the most promising writers of his generation.” The Mist and the Maiden has been sold to Italy (Passigli) and France (Lattès). Other works from the author have been translated into Russian, and are in the process of being translated into Greek and German. Contact Laure Merle d’Aubigné of ACER (Madrid).
Also in Spain, Maria de la Pau Janer’s novel The Women in Me summons up the ethereal story of a twentysomething orphan, Carlota, whose home is haunted by a matriarchal clan of phantoms: there’s her mother Elisa, who died under mysterious circumstances at the age of twenty, and also grandmother Sofia, who lost her life at the same age during childbirth. Faced with the fear of sharing their fate, young Carlota embarks on a quest to reconstruct their lives through stories told by her grandfather, who is her only surviving relative. Already on its 4th edition in Spanish with 115,000 copies sold (and with a Catalan edition on the way), the book has been sold to Germany (Blanvalet). For rights, see Cristina Mora of Planeta.
And a final note: last month we got our wires crossed in our Year-End International Bestseller List. Contrary to our report, US rights to bestselling author Luis Verissimo’s The Lies that Men Tell (which was #10 on our year-end list) are available from agent Ray-Güde Mertin in Germany.
