Of Love and War
Formerly Exiled Korean Writer Revisits Vietnam, While France’s Frèches Hits The Silk Road
One of South Korea’s best-known writers, Hwang Sok-Yong, has found a fervent audience in France for his monumental and controversial literary portraits denouncing “both corruption and American imperialism” in the Vietnam and Korean wars. In The Shadow of Arms — “a requiem worthy of Faulkner” — Anh Yeong-Kyu is a young Korean corporal drafted into the Allied Forces’ investigation unit in Southern Vietnam, just after the Tet Offensive. A witness to black market dealings, the sordid commercial opportunism that accompanied the war, and the humiliation and death of a Vietnamese colleague, Yeong-Kyu grows bitter and detached at the thought of participating in someone else’s war. The author himself reluctantly fought for the American cause as part of Korea’s military corps in Vietnam, and was responsible for erasing the proof of civilian massacres. Inspired by Che Guevara and Franz Fanon, Sok-Yong asserts that his writings are different from American books and films he has read or seen on the subject in that he asks global questions about war, its origins, and its place in history, while others exclude the Vietnamese from their representations, resulting in abstractions and “mere ambiguous humanism from the point of view of a white man.” His first novel, Dr. Han, is the story of a family separated in the Korean war. The Guest —slated for publication by Zulma (France) this year — is a novel about an actual massacre in North Korea wrongly attributed to American forces. Exiled Sok-Yong came to New York and was subsequently imprisoned upon his return to Seoul. Several members of a company were killed while performing one of his plays during the 1980 Kwangju uprising. With his recent launch of a satellite television station, CTV, which broadcasts to the whole of Korea, Japan, and half of China, Sok-Yong continues to speak out against the rise of the “American hegemony” (suggesting an Asian-European alliance in the interests of a new world order). Rights for The Guest and Dr. Han have been translated into several Asian languages and have been sold to DTV (Germany). Contact Fabienne Trunyo at Zulma (France) for Western translation rights.
Love blossoms at the jungle gym in Katarina Mazetti’s latest, Tarzan’s Tears, which hits the list in Sweden. A poor mother of two meets a wealthy technology consultant on the swings, knocking him off his feet — quite literally. Mariana is already married, but her husband’s battle with schizophrenia is taking a toll on the family, while the debonaire Janne offers her a constancy she couldn’t even imagine. Mariana returns to a little cottage that she is sharing with her friend Jenny and their four children for the weekend, assuming she will never see the eligible bachelor again. When Jenny offers to babysit one night, Mariana heads to a local restaurant, but is stopped in her tracks by another fortuitous encounter with Janne (who dubs her “Tarzan” after her swing stunt). Drawn to each other despite their very different lifestyles (he’s a bit too sophisticated for her kids’ birthday parties at Burger King, and she finds him devoid of passion), they eventually make some sense of their rather quirky love affair. Rights have been sold to Piper (Germany) and Pax (Norway), while rights to her earlier book, The Boy Next Grave (about a love affair that starts in a cemetery), have been sold to Svea (Bulgaria), Lindhardt & Ringhof (Denmark), Adriano Salani (Italy), Arena (Netherlands), Text (Russia), and more. Contact AnnaKaisa Danielsson at Alfabeta (Sweden).
Tána Keleová-Vasilková has become a mainstay on the Slovak bestseller list with her own version of “chick lit” that highlights the extraordinary qualities of seemingly ordinary women. The Wives records a year in the lives of four high school friends — their daily struggles, desires, and disappointments, as well as changes in their relationships with husbands and partners. Also making the grade is The Spider’s Web, in which Blanka, a young and successful actress, protects her personal life so fastidiously that even her closest friends and colleagues do not know what secrets she hides. While trying to protect herself and her young daughter, Blanka entangles herself in a web of lies from which she cannot escape. Rights to all nine of Keleová-Vasilková’s novels are available from Zuzana Sersenova at Ikar (Slovak Republic).
Basque author, playwright, and screenwriter Toti Martínez de Lezea reconstructs famous tales of the misfortunes of medieval Spain in The Commoner. In 1511, María de Pacheco is forced by her father to marry Juan de Padilla, whose social position is inferior to hers. Nevertheless, the two fall in love as they lead the insurrection of Castille. For defending the rights of their people against the troops of Carlos I, María, a rebellious and powerful woman, is sent into exile in Portugal. Rights to the author’s earlier novels, The Abbess (the tale of an illegitimate daughter who is abducted and taken to a convent where she becomes Abbess of las Huelgas de Burgos) and The Herbalist (which recreates the persecution of the Inquisition), have been sold to Krüger (Germany), while The Sons of Ogaiz (the story of two brothers’ struggle to survive in Basque Country during the Black Plague) has been sold to Elkar (France). Contact Sophie Legrand at ACER (Spain).
The year is 655, and the court of the emperor of China is in turmoil in French author José Frèches’ new three-volume saga The Silk Empress. A beautiful courtesan of humble origins, Wuzhao, is set to marry the young emperor Gaozong, of the Tang Dynasty. Wuzhao aspires to wield power like an emperor and uses Buddhism to gain allies. What ensues is a study of the role of religion and cultural exchange along the Silk Road — the sole, fragile link between East and West, where the struggle for religious dominance is waged over the souls of the faithful. Frèches combines fictitious characters with historical figures (as in his first trilogy about ancient China, The Legend of the Jade — “prodigious historical adventure novels of this caliber are rare” — which has sold more than 310,000 copies in France). He has been published in Poland (Albatros), the Czech Republic (Alpress S.R.O.), Greece (Chadjinikoli), Germany (Verlagsgruppe Random), and Brasil (Objetiva). Contact Axelle Hardy at XO (France).
One of South Korea’s best-known writers, Hwang Sok-Yong, has found a fervent audience in France for his monumental and controversial literary portraits denouncing “both corruption and American imperialism” in the Vietnam and Korean wars. In The Shadow of Arms — “a requiem worthy of Faulkner” — Anh Yeong-Kyu is a young Korean corporal drafted into the Allied Forces’ investigation unit in Southern Vietnam, just after the Tet Offensive. A witness to black market dealings, the sordid commercial opportunism that accompanied the war, and the humiliation and death of a Vietnamese colleague, Yeong-Kyu grows bitter and detached at the thought of participating in someone else’s war. The author himself reluctantly fought for the American cause as part of Korea’s military corps in Vietnam, and was responsible for erasing the proof of civilian massacres. Inspired by Che Guevara and Franz Fanon, Sok-Yong asserts that his writings are different from American books and films he has read or seen on the subject in that he asks global questions about war, its origins, and its place in history, while others exclude the Vietnamese from their representations, resulting in abstractions and “mere ambiguous humanism from the point of view of a white man.” His first novel, Dr. Han, is the story of a family separated in the Korean war. The Guest —slated for publication by Zulma (France) this year — is a novel about an actual massacre in North Korea wrongly attributed to American forces. Exiled Sok-Yong came to New York and was subsequently imprisoned upon his return to Seoul. Several members of a company were killed while performing one of his plays during the 1980 Kwangju uprising. With his recent launch of a satellite television station, CTV, which broadcasts to the whole of Korea, Japan, and half of China, Sok-Yong continues to speak out against the rise of the “American hegemony” (suggesting an Asian-European alliance in the interests of a new world order). Rights for The Guest and Dr. Han have been translated into several Asian languages and have been sold to DTV (Germany). Contact Fabienne Trunyo at Zulma (France) for Western translation rights.
Love blossoms at the jungle gym in Katarina Mazetti’s latest, Tarzan’s Tears, which hits the list in Sweden. A poor mother of two meets a wealthy technology consultant on the swings, knocking him off his feet — quite literally. Mariana is already married, but her husband’s battle with schizophrenia is taking a toll on the family, while the debonaire Janne offers her a constancy she couldn’t even imagine. Mariana returns to a little cottage that she is sharing with her friend Jenny and their four children for the weekend, assuming she will never see the eligible bachelor again. When Jenny offers to babysit one night, Mariana heads to a local restaurant, but is stopped in her tracks by another fortuitous encounter with Janne (who dubs her “Tarzan” after her swing stunt). Drawn to each other despite their very different lifestyles (he’s a bit too sophisticated for her kids’ birthday parties at Burger King, and she finds him devoid of passion), they eventually make some sense of their rather quirky love affair. Rights have been sold to Piper (Germany) and Pax (Norway), while rights to her earlier book, The Boy Next Grave (about a love affair that starts in a cemetery), have been sold to Svea (Bulgaria), Lindhardt & Ringhof (Denmark), Adriano Salani (Italy), Arena (Netherlands), Text (Russia), and more. Contact AnnaKaisa Danielsson at Alfabeta (Sweden).
Tána Keleová-Vasilková has become a mainstay on the Slovak bestseller list with her own version of “chick lit” that highlights the extraordinary qualities of seemingly ordinary women. The Wives records a year in the lives of four high school friends — their daily struggles, desires, and disappointments, as well as changes in their relationships with husbands and partners. Also making the grade is The Spider’s Web, in which Blanka, a young and successful actress, protects her personal life so fastidiously that even her closest friends and colleagues do not know what secrets she hides. While trying to protect herself and her young daughter, Blanka entangles herself in a web of lies from which she cannot escape. Rights to all nine of Keleová-Vasilková’s novels are available from Zuzana Sersenova at Ikar (Slovak Republic).
Basque author, playwright, and screenwriter Toti Martínez de Lezea reconstructs famous tales of the misfortunes of medieval Spain in The Commoner. In 1511, María de Pacheco is forced by her father to marry Juan de Padilla, whose social position is inferior to hers. Nevertheless, the two fall in love as they lead the insurrection of Castille. For defending the rights of their people against the troops of Carlos I, María, a rebellious and powerful woman, is sent into exile in Portugal. Rights to the author’s earlier novels, The Abbess (the tale of an illegitimate daughter who is abducted and taken to a convent where she becomes Abbess of las Huelgas de Burgos) and The Herbalist (which recreates the persecution of the Inquisition), have been sold to Krüger (Germany), while The Sons of Ogaiz (the story of two brothers’ struggle to survive in Basque Country during the Black Plague) has been sold to Elkar (France). Contact Sophie Legrand at ACER (Spain).
The year is 655, and the court of the emperor of China is in turmoil in French author José Frèches’ new three-volume saga The Silk Empress. A beautiful courtesan of humble origins, Wuzhao, is set to marry the young emperor Gaozong, of the Tang Dynasty. Wuzhao aspires to wield power like an emperor and uses Buddhism to gain allies. What ensues is a study of the role of religion and cultural exchange along the Silk Road — the sole, fragile link between East and West, where the struggle for religious dominance is waged over the souls of the faithful. Frèches combines fictitious characters with historical figures (as in his first trilogy about ancient China, The Legend of the Jade — “prodigious historical adventure novels of this caliber are rare” — which has sold more than 310,000 copies in France). He has been published in Poland (Albatros), the Czech Republic (Alpress S.R.O.), Greece (Chadjinikoli), Germany (Verlagsgruppe Random), and Brasil (Objetiva). Contact Axelle Hardy at XO (France).
