She’s Got Game
Gablé’s Bold Move in Germany, Forest Fling in Holland, And Spain’s Answer to Umberto Eco
Move over, Monopoly. Board game junkies worldwide are in for a surprise this month as author and former university lecturer in Medieval Studies Rebecca Gablé’s quirky novel The Settlers of Catan hits stores and the German bestseller list. The book — based on one of the most popular board games in Germany, which is also distributed to a fanatical following in the US — details the exploits of a group of medieval settlers in the northern village of Elasund who are forced to do battle with a horde of marauders hell-bent on rape, pillage, and plunder. In the year 850, the survivors, including brothers Candamir and Osmund, head for the high seas in search of a new home, collecting a shipwrecked Christian missionary along the way, and settling on the uninhabited island of Catan, located near Scotland and known only from legend up to that point. Conflict sparks as the brothers fight one another for power. We’re not revealing too much to say that one brother embraces Christianity and eventually leaves Catan (sequel, anyone?).
We’re told the board game’s creator approached Gablé to write the novel, and though the game is not entirely specific about time and place, both author and creator agreed on a Viking-like setting in mythical locales. Bob Carty, Director of Sales for Mayfair Games, which holds worldwide English language rights for the game, reports that over 8 million copies of The Settlers of Catan and its family of products have been sold worldwide (spinoffs include The Settlers of the Stone Age, The Seafarers of Catan, and The Kids of Catan, which is scheduled for US release this month). US sales of the game have increased every year since its release in 1995 and are up 60% over last year (Carty expects the same trend to continue for at least the next decade). The game has also hit stores in Russia and Japan, and rumor has it that an edition featuring US historical scenarios is in the works. This is Gablé’s third historical novel set in the high middle ages, and all have been bestsellers. Gablé’s debut, Fortuna’s Smile, has just reached the half-million mark as a paperback. Agent Michael Meller will be selling US rights to the book in December.
Speaking of games, the 49th installment of Children’s Book Week opened last month in Holland in a style reminiscent of the Grimm Brothers, as some 90% of Dutch primary schools, bookshops, and libraries pushed books set in forests, as well as nonfiction titles dealing with trees and other such silvan settings. Author Francine Oomen and illustrator Michael Dudok de Wit kicked off the week, which is sponsored by the Collective Propaganda for the Dutch Book (CPNB), with an appearance at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Holland’s biggest national park, where they unveiled a series of tree huts which they designed with the help of architect Diederik Dam and interior designer Piet Hein Eek. Oomen’s book How to Survive a Broken Heart, chosen as this year’s gift book (it’s given as a gift by bookshops to anyone who bought a minimum of €9.99 worth of children’s books), had a print run of 368,000 copies. Dudok de Wit, who won the Golden Apple award at the 19th Biennial of Illustrations in Bratislava earlier this year, created the picture book Four Small Beavers in the Night especially for the Book Week celebration. With a first print run of 115,000, and a special sale price of €2.25, the book continues to fly off shelves. Stay tuned for news on next year’s Children’s Book Week, as plans are in the works for an even more extravagant 50th anniversary celebration. Contact Agnes Vogt at the CPNB for more on the Book Week selections.
In Spain, computer hacker and technology entrepreneur Arnau Queralt races against time to find a cure for a mysterious illness that has left his brother in a coma in Matilde Asensi’s latest novel to hit the Spanish bestseller list, The Lost Origin. Accompanied by his cronies Marc and Lola, Arnau sojourns through time, uncovering answers to some of mankind’s greatest mysteries, including Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and the true role of the Spanish in the conquest of America, as he travels to the heart of a lost Inca civilization in the ruins of Twianacu in the Amazon jungle. Asensi is said to have revolutionized the adventure novel just as “Umberto Eco shook the foundations of the historical novel with The Name of the Rose.” All rights are available from Cristina Mora at Planeta.
In a more sober historical mode, immigrants “live free and die like waves” in Senegalese-born author Fatou Diome’s meditation on exile and the immigrant experience in The Belly of the Atlantic, which catapults to the top of the French list this month. Salie has emigrated to France, and her brother dreams of reuniting with her there, envisioning a promised land where Senegalese footballers achieve fame and refugees ward off their tragic destinies. Salie struggles to reveal to him the dark side of immigration, including the expectations of those left behind and the contrasting destinies of people seized by the tide of sadness that overwhelms the exiled. It’s almost too much to bear, yet Diome explores the irresistible call of “the elsewhere” and the strength of those fated to live as outsiders both at home and abroad. “Immigration is the object of a thousand clichés,” one critic writes. “In one novel, Fatou Diome sweeps them all away.” The book is currently under auction in Holland. US rights are available from Lucinda Karter at the French Publishers Agency.
As an addendum to last month’s coverage of the Czech and Slovak markets, Jaroslav Cisar’s newest findings reveal a dynamic growth in the quantity of titles translated from Slovak to Czech in the past year, which have increased fourfold from 32 to 116 titles. Cisar infers that this is a result of diminishing hard feelings between the two countries. There’s hope yet.
Finally, an extended note on the headline-grabbing German nonfiction bestseller list: As reported elsewhere, the venerable Piper Verlag is tuning into a tide of anti-American sentiment in Germany, with five current bestsellers in Der Spiegel that are critical of Bush and his cronies, including three by Michael Moore: Stupid White Men, which was published there six months ago and has already sold about 1.2 million copies; Downsize This, which has sold about 300,000 copies; and Dude, Where’s My Country?, set for release this month with a 200,000 first printing. Rounding off the list are several other fiery tracts, including what critics are calling French author Emmanuel Todd’s “provocative…analysis from a European point of view,” USA World Power: An Obituary (100,000 sold and counting), and perhaps most controversial of all, the conspiracy theory–ridden book written by Germany’s former Federal Minister for Research, 66-year-old Andreas von Bülow, entitled The CIA and the 11th of September: International Terror and the Role of the Secret Services. Von Bülow’s book, which has sold 80,000 copies since its release in July, includes his assertions that there were no plane remains found at the Pentagon (ditto on the field in Pennsylvania), and that al Qaeda was in no way responsible for the attacks. As polls show, more than 50% of Germans believe that the CIA and Bush knew in advance about 9/11, but grimly stayed the course in order to create a spectacular, Pearl Harbor–like justification to invade Iraq. Since another 19% of Germans are convinced that Bush and the CIA actually planned the attack, it is no surprise that a title even as controversial as von Bülow’s would find an eager audience in Germany.
So would it sell in the US?
“To be honest, interest is not that big at the moment,” reports Piper Rights Manager Nicole Leppin. So far the book has been submitted in the US and is also being considered by publishers in the Netherlands, France, Italy, and Spain, some of whom only received copies of the book at Frankfurt. (Out of sheer curiosity, we’ve consulted a few US publishers who would have no problem publishing this subject matter in principle, but who are not interested in this book in particular.) Responding to the quiet response from US publishers, Leppin simply noted that the book reflects one point of view, “and not everybody wants to share this point of view. Next year, maybe there will be another kind of approach.” Moreover, the release in Germany was tied to the second anniversary of 9/11, and Leppin remarked that it would be difficult for foreign publishers to attract the same media mayhem if the book were published at any other time of the year.
Recently, many of von Bülow’s hypotheses were debunked on German television, but he’s simply swatted aside the criticism. Leppin adds that there has been a huge response from the public and the press — both positive and negative — and the difference between the sharply critical reception of the book and the huge public thirst for it is striking. “Sales haven’t suffered, even with all of the criticism he’s received on German television,” Leppin says. The blistering attacks, she adds, may have even helped to stoke sales further.
Contact Nicole Leppin at Nicole.Leppin@piper.de.
