30-Somethings, Tigers, and the Algerian Liberation Front
As if being CEO of a multinational company and founder of the successful business book summary site getAbstract.com weren’t enough, Rolf Dobelli added the title of novelist to his resumé in 2001 when, on his 35th birthday, he began writing fiction. Two years later, the Swiss-born PhD published Thirty-five (Diogenes), a novel about an executive who takes a tumble down the ranks of the marketing world. A year later, he followed up with What Do You Do for a Living? His latest novel, Himmelreich, departs momentarily from the particular problems of the marketplace, veering into more fantastic ones. Just as the protagonist, Philipp Himmelreich, is about to destroy his marriage by embarking on an affair with a young bookseller named Josephine, his company transfers him to New York. Safe from all temptations on a plane thousands of feet above the Atlantic, Himmelreich allows himself a final fantasy of Josephine. In his daydream, she kidnaps him, taking him captive on a trip around the world. Life progresses as expected in New York and Himmelreich remains untroubled by his past until the FBI suddenly show up and tell him that Josephine has disappeared. Himmelreich’s fantasy life and reality collide when it’s revealed that he himself is the prime suspect. A critic from Die Welt says the novel is for anyone “who wants to understand how unleashed turbo-capitalism levels the mountain ranges of our dreams and destroys the landscapes of the soul.” Contact Susanne Bauknecht (bau@diogenes.ch).
Approaching the global business landscape from a different perspective is the French non-fiction title The Google Model: A Management Breakthrough (MM2 Editions). The first business book to explore the leadership methods that inspire the seemingly bottomless pit of Google innovation, the title elicited interest among foreign publishers at Frankfurt, and raised the eyebrows of the sometimes not-so-Google-friendly publishing industry. The French public has no qualms picking up the book though and in the first weeks after its release it broke the top 10 on amazon.fr. The author, Bernard Girard, was one of the first to write about the francophone Internet in 1995 and has been following Google’s management innovations since 2000. The 230 page, five chapter book breaks down the “don’t be evil” philosophy of Google management, touching on its recruitment strategies and celebrated 20% rule. The first chapter comparing the vision of founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to their revolutionary predecessors Henry Ford and Toyota‘s Taiichi Ohno borders on hagiography (i.e. “The history of Google reads like a fairy tale about young people who dream of becoming Masters of the World”). In addition, the background on the cultural climate in which Google was born might be a bit too familiar for readers in the States, but Girard proceeds to analyze what Google does that goes against the status quo taught at business school and why it works. Both Les Echos and Le Journal du Net, leading French internet magazines, have praised the title. Contact Malo Girod de l’Ain (malo@mm2editions.com).
From Bilger, the trailblazing verlag devoted solely to the publication of Swiss literature, comes playwright Daniel Goetsch’s Ben Kader, a novel dealing in part with what it means to be Swiss. The novel opens as Kader, an Armenian-Algerian working as an interpreter in 1950s French-occupied Algeria, is abducted by three members of the Algerian Liberation Front. His mixed ethnicity saves him at the hands of his kidnappers, however, and he manages to convince them that he could not commit the torture they accuse him of since he is, in a way, one of them. After being released, Ben begins an affair with one of his captors and eventually helps her escape to France. While not being Swiss is what saved Ben during the abduction, being Swiss is what gets his son and the novel’s protagonist, Dan, fired from his job at a Zurich PR firm, though the firm tries to hide its decision behind allegations of his arrogance and standoffishness. Past and present converge when a French journalist asks Dan for a dossier written by his estranged father who is now seriously ill. Dan explores his father’s past just as he begins to die. Contact Ricco Bilger (bilger@bilgerverlag.ch).
Named after Siegfried and Roy’s renegade white tiger, Montecore (Norstedts) follows up Swedish-Tunisian writer Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s hugely successful debut One Eye Red. The young writer mined his multi-ethnic background this time around, telling a meta-story à la Bret Easton Ellis in which Khemiri plays himself. The novel opens with the protagonist Jonas Hassen Khemiri as he finishes writing his hit novel. He receives a strange email from Kadir, a man who claims to be his father’s childhood friend. Written in a bizarre and comical language combining vocabulary from French, Arabic, and Swedish, the email urges Jonas to find a nobler topic for his next novel. The two strike up a correspondence, causing Jonas to explore memories of his childhood in a Tunisia where xenophobia and racism were shunned, but still existed. As their correspondence grows more intense and topics turn intimate, Jonas wonders who exactly Kadir is. To top off the already unusual circumstances, an immigrant-obsessed murderer plagues Stockholm as Jonas tries to put the pieces together of his own mysterious life. One impressed critic says that Montecore is “a weave of performances, a literary performance where the authenticity catches fire, and the language is like a nimble tiger leaping through the flaming ring.” Rights have been licensed in Germany (Piper), Denmark (Gyldendal), Norway (Gyldendal), Holland (De Geus), and Finland (Johnny Kniga). For more information, contact Magdalena Hedlund (Magdalena.hedlund@norstedtsagency.se).
Though ostensibly not as flashy as a flying leap through a ring of fire, the daily routine of an average housewife proves just as dramatic in the hands of Greek author Eleni Yannakaki in her latest novel The Cherubs in the Carpeting (Hestia). Her portrayal of Maria, a 40 year-old architect who has chosen to stay home to care for her children and husband, is a departure from the typical “desperate housewife” or chick lit heroine. Holed up in her bathroom hideaway, Maria spends most of her time cleaning, reading women’s magazines, and struggling to find relief from her often oppressive situation. She tries to escape by taking three different lovers, but after a while finds herself doing anything to maintain the status quo she thought she couldn’t bear. Taking place over only 17 hours, the narrative builds suspense as more and more of Maria’s reality is revealed, including the moment when the reader realizes the housewife is a criminal. According to a critic, traces of the protagonist’s crime are cleverly hidden throughout the novel with even more inventiveness than in the best psychological thrillers of Patricia Highsmith. All rights available. Contact Alexia Varotsou (alexia@hestia.gr) for more information.
