Iraqi Exile in Denmark, Czech Band Beats Persecution,
Chinese Memoir Smuggled to France
Defining the immigrant experience is about as easy as finding the proverbial needle in a haystack, yet a former Iraqi citizen now living in Denmark has penned her contribution to this genre with a “quiet, sad and nevertheless unsentimental portrayal of [her] new life,” in Late Discoveries, Small Victories. Duna Ghali moved from Basra to Denmark more than 10 years ago, and her former life in Iraq provides the backdrop against which she describes the almost imperceptible changes in her daily life, along with her overwhelming sense of isolation and anxiety. Praised for her avoidance of cliché, Ghali organizes her book into 22 compact scenes that, though often tense, contain “brief moments of happiness that burst like soap bubbles.” She brings scrutiny to the wrenching experience of relocation and exile, and reimagines the influence that new surroundings can have on one’s world view. Ghali has written two other novels in Arabic, published in Syria (Al-Mada), and this latest novel will be published in a bilingual edition, which can be read from the front in Danish and from the back in Arabic. Contact Ingelise Korsholm at The Gyldendal Group Agency (Denmark).
Harboring a peculiar aversion to verbs, a French author writing under the pseudonym Michel Thaler has set out to do what no author has done before: write an entire book with no verbs. The 233-page novel, entitled The Train From Nowhere, incorporates lengthy passages “filled with florid adjectives in a series of vitriolic portraits of dislikeable passengers on a train.” Thaler, who stifles grammar and characterizes the verb as the “invader, dictator, usurper of our literature,” boldly declares that he is doing for literature what the Dada movement and Surrealism did for art. Some wisecracking critics have made tongue-in-cheek comments about the lack of action in Thaler’s novel, yet it remains to be seen whether the book will be as admired as La Disparition, which Georges Perec wrote in 1969 without using the letter e (its sequel contained no vowel except e), and which was valiantly translated into English as A Void by Gilbert Adair and published in the US by HarperCollins in 1995. Contact Chrystel Manfredi-Matringe of Adcan (France).
Also in France, a rare testimony on life in China from the beginning of the 20th century until the end of the Cultural Revolution has finally made its way into the public sphere, thanks to the efforts of a French translator who studied in China more than 15 years ago. Storm Clouds Gathering is the autobiography of Chen Ming and is just as much a metaphor for the history of 20th century China. Born in 1908, Chen Ming spent his childhood in the poor northeast province of Shanxi, yet after years of tireless study, he went on to become a well-respected professor. A series of regime changes drastically altered the course of his life, and in 1937, after returning from two years in England, Chen Ming returned to find his country at war with Japan. Following the rise of the Communist Party, he was sent to laogai, the Chinese gulag, where the horrifying conditions led to the death of some inmates and the suicides of others. Forbidden to teach, he took up work as a street sweeper and was monitored daily by parole officers and forced to make public confessions. French student and translator Camille Loivier arrived on the scene in 1988 and a chance encounter with Chen Ming resulted in his decision to compile his memoirs. Though his writings were (and still are) banned in China, he met with her on a regular basis and entrusted her to translate the book and get it published in France, which involved smuggling the manuscript out of the country. Still, the author, who died in 1996, never renounced his country and reserved his criticism for the communist regime alone. Rights have been sold to Marsilio (Italy) and US rights are being offered by Alice Tassel at the French Publishers’ Agency.
Thirteen-year-old Fania Schiefer carries quite a burden growing up in a household full of Holocaust survivors in 1960s Hamburg in Viola Roggenkamp’s debut novel Family Life. Her mother’s and grandmother’s lives are shaped by a world that has “more death than life in it,” and her family’s tragic past is hardly a distant memory. Fania and her sister Vera rush home after school every day, well aware that their mother will be inconsolably anxious if they are late. At the same time, their overprotective parents are rarely critical of the girls and their father even sneaks out in the middle of the night to buy chocolate to satisfy Fania’s craving for a late-night snack. Drawing from a Jewish storytelling tradition, as well as her own experiences growing up half-Jewish in post-war Germany, Roggenkamp (who was publisher of Die Zeit for three decades and is still one of the most-respected journalists in Germany) has been praised for her ability to evoke simultaneous laughter and tears. In fact, German television personality and book guru Elke Heidenreich recently featured the book on her show Lesen! (Read!), raving, “What is so wonderful is that she has so much humor.” Rights are available from Elisabeth Raabe at Arche Verlag (Germany) and have been sold to Mondadori (Italy). Interest is brewing in the Netherlands, France, Spain and elsewhere.
A self-proclaimed Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde whose interests run the gamut from books to rock-and-roll, Jaroslav Císar (who translates the Czech list for PT) was recently awarded the 4th Annual Miroslav Ivanov Non-fiction Literature Award for his latest book Framus Five: Swallowed Words Blues. Named for the famed Czech author of 29 books that have been translated into nine different languages, the award is presented by the Non-fiction Literature Authors’ Club committee for outstanding original Czech non-fiction literature published within the past three years. Císar’s latest book tells the history of one of the most popular Czech rhythm-and-blues bands, called Framus Five, which formed back in the 1960s and was plagued by persecution after the Russian-led invasion of 1968. Lead singer Michal Prokop and the band were heroes to a generation and developed quite a following in Poland, too. Inspired by American rhythm-and-blues, the group sang only in English until they were prohibited from doing so after 1968. An avid collector of records, Císar’s specialty is American, British and Canadian rock from the 1950s through the ’70s. He has also published an encyclopedia Years of Rock, featuring listings for “golden oldies” Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Tommy James & The Shondells, Roy Orbison and Steppenwolf. For rights queries, contact the author at jaroslav.cisar@volny.cz.
