Surreality Bites
Warlocks Roam Poland, Italy’s Spinster/Warrior, And Potter-philia Sweeps Russia
If contemporary world history isn’t surreal enough for you, dive into the willful wickedness of Andrej Sapkowski’s latest genre-bending novel, Narrenturm (it roughly translates from the German as Asylum). Freely warping the historical and the fantastic, this Polish bestseller follows the relatives of a Silesian duke as they surprise an amorous knight — Reinmar of Bielawa, known as Reynevan — in flagrante with the duke’s Burgundian wife. When the knight bolts out the door, the chase is on. Set in 1425 in the Czech Crown lands (just after the world failed to implode, despite fire-and-brimstone predictions to the contrary), the book’s historical details are accurate down to the finest codpiece, though the plot is entirely fictional. Sapkowski has written numerous collections of short stories, as well as a masterful five-volume sequence about a warlock named Geralt (motifs of which were the basis for the film Warlock, which premiered in Poland in 2001). The author got his break when he won a writing contest in 1985, and his charmingly eccentric stories have been compared with rave-worthy Polish sci-fi author Stanislaw Lem (both authors are hits among young readers). Word on the street is that Sapkowski has plenty more tricks up his sleeve. He’s been translated into Czech, Russian, Lithuanian, and German; contact Patricia Pasqualini of Agence de L’Est (France) for the rest of the world.
In a darker quasi-fantastical tale, it took a lot more than duct tape to protect a group of women — the wives, sisters, daughters, and nieces of General Bento Congalves, leader of a revolutionary group in Brazil’s Farropilha War — who endured 10 long years cloistered at a secluded house in southern Brazil between 1835 and 1845. Letícia Wierzchowski’s novel The House of the Seven Women is the story of that cruel abode and the war’s impact on each of its inhabitants. The names and destinies of some of the women are true-to-life, and are intertwined with bloody battle scenes from a clash that profoundly shaped Brazilian history. Already in its fifth printing, the book went gangbusters after the January launch of a TV Globo miniseries, adapted from the book by Walter Negrão and Maria Adelaide Amaral and directed by Jayme Monjardim. Queries have come in from Portugal, Spain, and Germany, and others are hot on the trail. Contact Elena Errazuriz of the Anne Marie Vallat Literary Agency (Spain) for France, Portugal, and Spanish rights, and Ray-Güde Mertin for all other territories.
Meanwhile, two books with very different timbres hit the Italian list at full force this month. From the “avenger of the single woman” who brought us the bestseller Alone Like a Celery Stalk (it sold about 1 million copies; see PT, Aug. ’01), comes a diary of a modern Princess and the Pea, who has no delusions about her prince. Known for insights into the single gal’s life, comic actress Luciana Littizzetto turns from her mainstay genre (“the surreal outpourings of a feather-brained single girl”) to a diary-like narrative of the relationship between an ordinary girl and guy written with a super-sardonic wit. Determined to prove that no woman should cry at the thought of being single (or the manifold horrors of finding a “better half”), Littizzetto, a former teacher of music, has triumphed as a cult figure of Italian humor. All rights are available from Mondadori.
The other title raising a ruckus in Italy is Giorgio Faletti’s psychological thriller I Kill, which will soon be taking its homicidal horrors to the silver screen via producer Aurelio De Laurentiis (Filmauro) — who just shelled out 600,000 euros for the rights to an international co-production, which will include the US and some European countries (it’s said to be one of the biggest deals ever in Italy for an adaptation). The book is described as a “thriller marked by a trace of sadness,” packed with desperations and reminiscent of Ken Follett. Faletti, a former cabaret artist and song lyricist making his literary debut, has elsewhere been dubbed a “more cultured Tom Clancy.” Several US publishing houses are already reading the novel, which features a Radio Monte Carlo DJ who receives delirious telephone calls from a serial killer. The crimes are shaped by musical clues, creating a “superb soundtrack for the story.” Contact Angela Lombardo at Baldini & Castoldi.
Regarding our newly added Russian bestseller list — for which PT gratefully acknowledges Yulia Borodyanskaya and Peter Gavrilov of Knizhnoye Obozreniye (Russia’s equivalent to PW) — you’ll notice three titles by noteworthy crime author Daria Dontsova, just one more sign of the burgeoning popularity of Russian-authored crime tomes. With the opening of the nation’s market in the ’90s, Western authors were readily devoured, but since then, homegrown authors have mastered the genre themselves — and demand hasn’t peaked yet. Crowned Russia’s “Writer of the Year” in 2001 and 2002, Dontsova has churned out about 40 titles (in what Gavrilov calls her “clinical graphomania”), most of them featuring a strong female protagonist. With hardcovers averaging $4 at bookstores (paperbacks rarely breach the $2 mark), scooping up a bundle of page-turners at a time is not uncommon — hence popular authors often have more than one bestselling title at once. Since 1995, Russian house Eksmo has published more than 27 million copies of her novels, which have been so widely disseminated that the act of reading them has been likened to “self-brain-washing.” (As Russia promotes its home-grown talent, PT has learned that it pays to be careful: at least one major US publisher’s attempt at a mega multi-title deal fell through when their Russian counterparts couldn’t make the advance payment.) Meanwhile, talk of crime and literature in Russia is not complete without mention of the pending lawsuit against young Russian author Dmitry Yemets, whose Tanya Grotter and the Magical Double Bass (the story of a bespectacled orphan who rides a magical flying double bass) is not the only Harry Potter parody — he’s battling for that distinction with Andrey Zhvalevsky’s Porry Gatter and the Stone Philosopher. That’s no surprise, considering that the “real” Harry Potter series has sold about 1.2 million copies in Russia. Fans waiting for the next Potter book will find the Grotter series a more affordable alternative, the first having sold 100,000 copies at about $2.50, compared to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which goes for a whopping $5.85. Unfazed by legal threats, Eksmo said it plans to publish two more Grotter books this year.
