Plagiarist Wallops Germany, Big Brother Is Watching in Italy, Dutch Golden Noose Nominee Smothers the Competition
Hold on to your Warranties and Indemnities clause and prepare for a ride through the fraudulent world of a young waiter who feigns authorship to impress one of his regular customers, in Swiss author Martin Suter’s latest book, Lila, Lila, which continues to rack up sales in Germany. David spends his days slaving away in a swanky bar and listening with envy to the literary banter of the eloquent Ralph and his girlfriend Marie. In the drawer of an old bedside cabinet, he discovers the one thing that just might persuade Marie to give him a second look — the handwritten text of an unpublished novel entitled Sophie, Sophie, penned in the 1950s by an author named Alfred Duster. After scanning it into his computer and making a single alteration (to the by-line, of course), he gives it to Marie, who immediately tells Ralph to hit the road and then submits the manuscript to a small Frankfurt publisher without David’s knowledge. Retitled Lila, Lila, the book becomes a roaring success, but as David and Marie grow closer, he becomes more and more fearful that his lie will be exposed. Enter Jacky Stocker, an elderly alcoholic from a nearby nursing home, who pulls David aside at the end of a reading and announces that he is the real author. Stocker threatens David with blackmail and takes him for everything he’s worth, but a serious accident ensues and, as he lies dying, Stocker confesses something that may keep David’s secret safe forever. In a final twist, the wily waiter learns his lesson by coming to the realization that “the literary life is not just a bed of canapés, especially when you haven’t earned them.” Suter’s books have been translated into 12 languages, including French (Christian Bourgois), Italian (Feltrinelli), Spanish (Anagrama), and Dutch (Signature).
Another Swiss author who is scoring big in Germany is Urs Widmer, who “moves between humour, irony and melancholy with the instinctive balance of a sleepwalker” in a pair of novels loosely based on the lives of his parents. Mother’s Lover is the tale of a woman whose life is dominated by her passionate but unrequited love for a famous conductor who has his own heart set on founding an orchestra to play Bartók, Krenek and Prokofiev. At the end of his life, he is the richest man in the country (so much for starving artists) and she is destitute, but still driven by her obsessive love for him. Her husband is strikingly absent throughout the book but this gap is filled by a second complementary novel, My Father’s Book, in which twelve-year-old Karl receives a blank diary for his birthday and proceeds to fill the book every day for the rest of his life. The book disappears after his death and before his son, as tradition dictates, has a chance to read it. Karl’s son retells his father’s story as he imagines it, recalling the man’s deep passion for literature, politics, and his wife. As the father inwardly rambles through the world of Villon, Diderot and Stendhal, he grows close to a group of young artists united in their antifascist beliefs, but his life ultimately becomes a model for the disillusionment of the 20th century. Called “the most light-footed and yet perhaps the most serious of Swiss writers,” Widmer has been translated into 18 languages, including French (Gallimard), Spanish (Siruela), Italian (Bompiani), and Dutch (Byblos). Contact Bettina Haydon at Diogenes for rights to Widmer’s and Suter’s books.
Revealing some not-so-encouraging news from the 22nd century, Italian songwriter Luciano Ligabue has composed his contribution to a tradition of grim dystopian writing of the Orwellian variety with Snow Couldn’t Care Less. The governing Vidor Plan has perfected a model for the happiness and well-being of its adherents. Simply stated, citizens are granted eleven rights, including the right to a partner for life as well as access to a program of adulterous affairs (granted on a case-by-case basis), and, in turn, they must promise to keep themselves in perfect psychological and physical health. Monitored by a carefully rigged system of micro-cameras and satellites, citizens are brought into the world at an advanced age and progress backwards toward a moment of non-existence that precedes birth, all the while knowing how much time they have left. Although all references to maternity have been stricken from historical record, one citizen, aptly named Nature, begins experiencing what the bureaucracy assures her is a “hormonal dysfunction,” but what turns out to be the first recorded pregnancy in nearly a century. A covert visit from a prisoner of the regime gives Nature and her partner the knowledge they need to carry out the unthinkable. Rights to this critique of the contemporary world are being offered by Francesca Dal Negro at Feltrinelli.
Fans of Nicci French and Karin Fossum are feasting their eyes on The Dinner Club, the latest from the best-selling female Dutch crime writer of all time, Saskia Noort (she’s also a freelance columnist for Marie Claire, among other magazines). A grand villa goes up in flames on a cold winter’s night and Evert Struyck, a successful businessman and happily married father of two, dies while his wife and children escape to safety. His wife’s friend Karen steps in to console the family, but soon discovers that the relationships within the dinner club are not as unconditional as they seem and that some people may even have profited from Evert’s death. Recently nominated for Holland’s most prestigious crime prize, The Golden Noose, this “suspenseful thriller about a group of people…who will defend success and happiness at any price” has sold more than 100,000 copies thus far. Her first book, Return to the Coast (a psychological thriller about a young woman who terminates a relationship and her pregnancy, and who must confront memories of her past while a mystery attacker advances), was also nominated for the prize. Rights to both books have been sold to Rowohlt/Wunderlich (Germany) and a Dutch film deal is in the works.
And this just in: Freelance journalist and long-time New Yorker Elvin Post has just been awarded the 2004 Golden Noose for his debut novel, Green Friday. Winston Malone, who lives with his wife in a seedy apartment on Staten Island, is fed up with his job and becomes involved with a shady crowd that includes an ice cream man who also deals firearms, a dwarf with an all-star wrestling past, and an enormously wealthy fan of Jerry Springer who possesses a deep reverence for dating services — all of whom are ready to duke it out for an unclaimed two million dollars. Only on Staten Island. Requests are flying in for reading copies and Chris Herschdorfer at Ambo/Anthos (Holland) expects the book to hit the bestseller list next week. Contact him for rights to all three titles.
