Sylvia Plath, Puberty, & A Slowly Setting Midnight Sun
Combining the quirky prose of Paul Auster and the eccentricity of The World According to Garp, Dutch author Tommy Wieringa’s latest novel, Joe Speedboat (De Bezige Bij), injects the classic Bildungsroman with postmodern absurdity. The eponymous protagonist, a fourteen year-old bomb expert, airplane builder, and kinetic philosopher, moves to a small community with a bang when his family’s moving van crashes into the living room of the town’s most prominent family. Joe’s stoicism when he sees his father sprawled dead on the hood of the van inspires bitter awe in the town’s boys. Their awe turns to envy after Joe demonstrates his knack for creating explosive inventions out of ordinary objects. When the other residents discover the boy’s extraordinary talents and self-confidence, they too are stunned and soon irritated with this destruction of the natural order. The author manages to investigate the concept of destiny with a tone that critics unanimously call “delightful.” One critic goes further to say “Joe Speedboat is a book that makes you happy.” Currently number fourteen on the Dutch bestseller list, the title has sold 95,000 copies since publication in March and has been shortlisted for three literary prizes. Rights have been licensed for German (Hanser), French (Actes Sud), and Italian (Iperborea). Contact Hayo Deinum (h.deinum@debezigebij.nl) for more information.
The midnight sun is slowly setting on Iceland, but sales of Steinunn Sigurdadóttir’s novel, Fortune’s Child (Edda), show no sign of fading. The narrator, a woman who lives with her distant and aging mother, meditates on 1950s Reykjavik with a detached and cynical voice, addressing her thoughts to an estranged boyfriend who has recently come back to the city. His return recalls memories of her late childhood, when her parents, both doctors, ignored her and the children at school teased her for the German accent she acquired from a nanny. Brief chapters and often ambiguous descriptions of the past conflated with the present create an intense, emotional atmosphere. The lyrical novel is Sigurdadóttir’s eighth and has been nominated for the Icelandic Literary and Icelandic Bookseller’s Prizes. Danish (Gyldendal) and Swedish (Wahlström and Widstrand) rights have been licensed. Contact Valgerdur Benediktsdottir (vala@edda.is).
Back on the mainland, despite, or perhaps because of, the perpetual controversy surrounding Swedish media personality Linda Skugge, her latest novel, A Speech for My Sister’s Wedding remains on the bestseller list months after publication. Her curious fans, dubbed “skuggies,” have come to expect outspoken, envelope-pushing novels and articles from the writer whose previous titles include Pussymob, Little Book of Puberty, Guys Beware This is God and She’s Really Pissed Off, and This is Not a Book. In her latest, Sylvia, a frenzied mother of two small children, wants to pursue the writing career she began before motherhood, but finds her husband unwilling to slow the pace of his own acting career to help her with the children. While society accepts Karl’s sacrifice of his family for art, Sylvia is expected to sacrifice her art for her family and is overloaded not only with the task of raising difficult children who fight all day long, but with planning her sister’s wedding as well. She identifies with Sylvia Path, the poet who shares her name and who experienced the same pressure of catering to an artistic husband while she had her own art to create. Snippets of Sylvia’s stressful daily life—menu ideas, telephone calls, e-mails—keeps the cynical novel light-hearted and fast-paced. Skugge recently started blogging for one of the biggest Swedish newspapers, Expressen, causing even more hubbub than usual by charging an access fee. Norwegian rights are licensed to Damm. Contact Bengt Nordin (bengt.nordin@nordinagency.se).
In Greece, tragedy is resurrected in The Woman Who Died Twice (Metaixmio), a novel that re-imagines the fate of Heleni Papadaki, the renowned Greek stage actress who was executed in the winter of 1944 on charges of collaboration with the Germans. Taken to the woods in the middle of the night, she was stripped, lined up with other alleged Nazi sympathizers, and shot twice. The historic account of Papadaki ends there, but in The Woman Who Died Twice, the bullets only graze her neck and she’s left stunned in the snow. Her grief-stricken brother, too horrified to examine his sister’s body at the morgue, identifies another woman who is then buried in her place. Eventually the unconscious actress awakens and stumbles to a nearby farmhouse. When she hears that her famous friends have publicly denounced her on the radio, she realizes she must never reveal her true identity or she will be killed again. Fifty years later, a doctor who is entranced by her poise and her resemblance to the actress he idolized, takes her in and his premonition of her actual history leads him on a search for the truth. The author, Manos Eleftheriou, tries to make sense of his country’s recent and complex history through an examination of court records, newspapers, and other historic documents that he includes in the novel. A prolific figure in Greek culture, Eleftheriou is best known as a poet and the lyricist for over 400 songs composed by major Greek composers of the past century. His previous historic novel, In the Time of the Chrysanthemums (2004), won the 2005 State Prize for Best Novel and was that year’s bestselling Greek title. Turkish rights to The Woman Who Died Twice have been licensed to Karakutu. Contact Danai Daska (rights@metaixmio.gr) for more information.
Although her parents risked everything working for the Resistance movement in Nazi Germany, Cornelia Schmalz-Jacobsen writes in her moving memoir, Two Trees in Jerusalem (Hoffmann & Campe), that they considered their behavior normal and that of the murdereres, informers, and silent by-standers not. Together they saved thousands of Jews, reasoning that it was better for their children to have no parents at all than to have cowards as role models. Though they survived the war, Donata and Eberhard Helmrich separated. Years later their heroism united them once again, this time at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem where trees are planted in honor of people who saved Jews during the Holocaust. On a recent trip to Berlin, our own Lorraine Shanley and former International Bestsellers editor, Siobhan O’Leary, met the author and heard the story of her parents firsthand. The leadership and humanity of her parents influenced Schmalz-Jacobsen and she has held many prominent positions in the German government in addition to being actively involved in Humanity in Action. Rights to this extraordinary account are still available four years after publication. Contact Valerie Schneider (valerie.schneider@hoca.de) at Hoffmann & Campe for more details.
