The young German über-poet, Silke Scheuermann, makes her novelistic debut this month with The Hour Between Dog and Wolf (Schoeffling). Much as in her successful short story collection, Rich Girls (2005, also Schoeffling), Scheuermann employs her poetic facility to good effect as she renders the confusion and frustration her generation faces as it attempts to define itself. The protagonist, a young, unnamed woman who feels compelled to take her day-to-day responsibilities seriously, finds her world disrupted when her estranged sister, Inès, returns after a several year absence. Tired of being her wild sister’s keeper, she nevertheless takes care of the messes caused by Inès’s irresponsibility and artistic impulses. Despite her annoyance, a strange envy and fascination with Inès’s chaotic life takes over, leading her to examine her own brief moments of wild abandon. Her reluctant identification with her sister goes further when she takes up with Inès’s boyfriend, Kai, and feels a fractured bliss unlike anything she’s felt before. With a bevy of literary prizes already on her resume, Scheuermann is being hailed in her country as “a big talent, and one of German literature’s great hopes.” Non-Germans too are beginning to see the universality in her writing as she’s been a writer-in-residence at various institutions in Italy and the U.S., including a stint at NYU’s Deutsches Haus. For rights information, contact Kathrin Scheel (kathrin.scheel@schoeffling.de).
It took a while for Hans Münstermann’s The Enchantment (Nieuw Amsterdam) to catch on in Holland, but since winning the AKO Literature prize this fall, the novel has sold 60 times as many copies in three months than in the previous nine after publication. The prize has turned Münstermann, already famous for inventing the genre of the “provocative novel” with Jan Tetteroo in the early nineties, into an even bigger celebrity and he’s now in demand on talk shows, literary festivals, and events around the country. In this novel, he follows characters from his earlier effort The Happy Year 1940 (L.J. Veen). The story is told by Andreas Klein, the son of a German father and Dutch mother who married on May 10th, 1940, the first day of the German occupation of the Netherlands. Navigating between two warring nations makes a profound impact on the lives of the family, especially his mother. As Andreas sits at her deathbed years later, the story unfolds of the hot summer of 1960 when his mother leaves her husband and five children for another man and a more adventurous life. She returns not long after, forever disenchanted and changed. Several rights deals are currently underway for this hot Dutch title, but no contracts have yet been signed. Contact Marie-Anne van Wijnen (MvanWijnen@nieuwamsterdam.nl) for more information.
Though Marta Rivera de la Cruz didn’t win Spain’s most lucrative writing award, the Premio Planeta, coming in second after Álvaro Pombo was enough to send her novel, In a Time of Prodigies, to the Spanish bestseller list. The Galician author is no stranger to awards, however, as her two previous novels have won several. Favoring clear and entertaining plotlines over “literary tricks” and complexities meant to stump the reader, de la Cruz is establishing herself as one of the more accessible writers in Spain. In her latest, she writes of an unlikely friendship between two people who have nothing in common: Cecilia, a 35 year-old recently divorced woman whose mother has just died, and Silvio, her best friend’s grandfather and second-rate crime novelist. Over the course of many long afternoon talks, Silvio slowly unravels the story of his double life, something he has shared with no one else. Through other unlikely friendships, including one with the American Zachary West and his adopted black son, Elijah, Silvio has passed through some of contemporary history’s most important events and places. He traveled from a small Spanish town to Madrid during the Civil War to Paris between the wars to Warsaw before Nazi occupation and to New York during Franco’s dictatorship, along the way finding hope and seekers of justice despite the prevailing cruelty. For rights information, contact Bernat Fiol at the Antonia Kerrigan Agency (bernat@antoniakerrigan.com).
Hot in Iceland at the moment is young author Audur Jónsdóttir, recipient of the Icelandic Literary Prize, nominee for the Nordic Council Literary prize, and granddaughter of Nobel Prize winner Halldor Laxness. Her famous grandfather served as inspiration for a children’s book in 2002, but her multicultural experiences living in Barcelona and Denmark are the fodder for her latest novel. A story set in a nameless city in a nameless country, Love Token (Edda) deals with the seemingly ubiquitous issues of immigration and culture clash. Unlike other novels of “integration” which are often told through the eyes of the immigrant, Love Token speaks from the perspective of the already established. A middle-aged heiress finds her wealth dwindling after many years of a spoiled existence, so, to bring in some extra cash, she writes an article about homelessness. In her new knowledge she finds a way to generate income. She rents out three rooms in her family’s mansion to three women from very different backgrounds. The women find their new landlady a tyrant who eventually uses the young daughter of one of them in a power play that culminates in a startling finale. A critic from the leading Icelandic newspaper says Love Token is “poignant and beautifully styled, a well-thought out novel about major issues.” For rights information, contact Úa Matthíasdóttir (ua@edda.is).
