Desperately Seeking Sister, Swede Picks Up Speed A Genealogical Guessing Game
A bevy of menacing women is tearing through the list in Argentina as Marisa Grinstein profiles fourteen femmes fatales who lay to waste the stereotype of the prim and proper lady in LadyKillers. Cheated out of their destiny and left bitter with baggage, each of these women embraces killing as a means of making an already desperate situation just a little bit worse. With the “passion of a criminologist” and the “objectivity of an inventory manager,” Grinstein, who covered national politics for the Argentine magazine Noticias, provides a catalog of aberration and deviance, and cites disturbing examples of the aggressive and criminal impulses of women scorned. A psychological investigation of the modes of violence employed, but not just a collection of personality profiles, Ladykillers delves into questions of gender stereotypes while investigating the reason why all fourteen murderers turned to knives, guns and acid over sugar and spice: they all hoped for something better. Rights are being handled by Daniela Morel at Sudamericana (Argentina).
An ominous feeling seeps under the skin of Emma van der Merwe when she goes to her sister Floor’s house and finds nothing but a doorway framed with piles of unread newspapers. Floor had been living alone since her husband died next to his mistress in a plane crash, and as Emma hunts through the eerily silent and empty house she can only expect the worst: that her sister has been gone for quite some time and that she left under the direst of circumstances. The reason for her unexplained absence is a conundrum for Emma, but the deeper she delves into her sister’s disappearance, the more her discoveries undermine and tarnish any certainties she had about their once seemingly strong relationship. The search leaves Emma floundering, as if trapped in quicksand, as she aims to discover the whereabouts of her sister and the villainous creature who has apparently done her wrong. The novel, Like Sand Through My Fingers, by Dutch journalist Tineke Beishuizen, has sold more than 25,000 copies in Holland. Contact Michele Hutchison at Arbeiderspers (Holland) for rights.
It’s no mystery why 30-year-old Swedish sensation Camilla Läckberg’s first three titles have sold over 400,000 copies in Sweden alone. PT revisits this marketing director turned author as her latest spine-tingler, The Stonecutter, chips away at the bestseller list. When one of Fjällbacka’s lobster fishermen finds a drowned seven-year-old girl named Sara, the locals initially believe her death to be an accident. The autopsy, however, reveals a much more nefarious scenario. Traces of fresh water combined with soap in her mouth lead to the conclusion that the girl was drowned indoors before she was thrown into the ocean. Enter Patrik Hedström, whose girlfriend Erica has just given birth to their first child, and who once again becomes the centerpiece of a complicated murder investigation with the help of his colleagues at Tanumshede’s police station. He uncovers an underworld of family conflicts, neighborhood feuds, and child pornography rings in the seemingly idyllic hamlet of Fjällbacka. Hedström must turn to incidents as far back as the 1920s to solve this present-day crime. “As fully packed with excitement as The Ice Princess and The Preacher. Rights to her latest novel have been sold to Gyldendal Norsk (Norway) and earlier titles have been sold to People’s Press (Denmark), Kiepenheuer (Germany), Ambo/Anthos (Holland), and Ari Utgafa (Iceland). Bengt Nordin of the eponymous agency (Sweden) is the rights holder.
Two women of different ages with two very different pasts come together to solve a question of family history in Minka Pradelski’s book, And then Came Mrs. Kugelmann, which was recently recommended by actress Iris Berben and Elke Heidenreich on the latter’s popular TV show Lesen! in Germany. When a young German woman, Zippy Silberberg, unexpectedly inherits a fish knife and fork from her recently deceased aunt Halina in Israel, she decides to retrieve the inheritance face-to-face (though her journey will take her far from her true love: frozen food, which she fears will be difficult to find in Israel.) When she arrives at the hotel, she encounters the chubby Bella Kugelmann, an elderly survivor of the Holocaust who persistently knocks on her door. Finally Zippy opens the door and Mrs. Kugelmann relays the story of her life as an immigrant in Israel. She listens attentively to tales of Mrs. Kugelmann’s childhood in Bendzin, Poland, of her family and friends and more jovial times. As her story begins to darken, a reference to the fish knife and fork awakens Zippy to the possibility that Mrs. Kugelmann’s stories of a long-forgotten world are the stories of her own family.
Also the daughter of Holocaust surivors, Pradelski, a sociologist and documentary writer, has written a “touching, humorous novel about an almost forgotten time and about the drift between generations: the generation which survived the Holocaust and the generation of their children.” The simplicity of Frau Kuglemann’s words provides a “most unusual, refreshing, and poignant treatment of a subject so complex and dark.” Rights are available from Elke Fuhrmann at Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt.
Finally, women aren’t the only mysterious creatures gracing our pages this month. In France, a homeless man with no name and no recorded past, steals a museum employee’s badge and makes the Louvre his new home in The Louvre Squatter, by Bernard Chenez, who was trained as a boilermaker before turning to writing. The vagabond spends his days picking up tourists and picking their pockets during regular visits to the coat check. As he looks for a cozy nook in which to snooze at night, we are offered a glimpse into the daily life of one of the world’s most recognizable and revered cultural institutions. “Against this highly irreverent and humorous backdrop,” the squatter learns everything there is to know about the museum and focuses on making it a home while feeding his desire to understand and appreciate art. Chenez is the author of many books of his collected editorial drawings for Le Monde, L’Evènement du Jeudi and L’Equipe (France’s daily sports paper). He brings to his first novel the same sharp, tender gaze that has made his visual art a success. He is famous in Japan where his drawings have appeared in the daily Asahi Shinbun. Contact Alice Tassel at the French Publishers’ Agency.
