Tannöd, Germany’s current number one fiction title, overcame two obstacles to win the prestigious 2007 Krimipreis for the best crime novel: the protagonist is not an investigator or super sleuth as is typical in crime fiction, and it is Andrea Maria Schenkel’s debut. She based the genre-bending novel on actual unsolved murders that took place in a small Bavarian village called Tannöd over eighty years ago. Late at night on an isolated farm, six people, including two children, were killed with a pickaxe. The killer remains unknown despite the efforts of many criminologists and writers who have been obsessed with solving the case. In Tannöd, Schenkel imagines a solution, recounting what might have happened in details so bloody and horrifying that her husband could not finish reading the manuscript. It is narrated by characters who live in Tannöd at the time of the murders, including the murderer who describes how he milks the cows and goes about his chores for several days while his victims’ corpses lay nearby. Scattered throughout the story are Catholic prayers and hymns which add an eerie edge to the violence. One critic called the novel “a coolly constructed story that strikes the reader as oppressively plausible.” Sales of Tannöd shot up from 15,000 in the first year to over 150,000 in the two months after it was awarded the Krimipreis. Foreign rights have been licensed in France (Actes Sud), Italy (Giunti), Denmark/Norway/Iceland (Ferdinand), Netherlands (Signature), Spain (Destino), Japan (Shueisha), China (Peoples Literature), and Taiwan (Global Group Holding) and German film rights have gone to Wueste Film West. For more information, contact Hanna Mittelstädt (hanna@edition-nautilus.de).
Further south in Austria, buzz is growing around a decidedly more light-hearted novel about a motley group of comic characters that goes on a wild goose chase. Mr. Debussy’s Message in a Bottle (Picus) by Michael Schulte tells the story of a talking parrot, a private detective from Brooklyn, a flautist from Nebraska, a German music researcher, a Parisian woman, and a hot dog billionaire from Dallas who all become obsessed with finding a wine bottle that might hold the first version of Claude Debussy’s “La Mer.” After chasing the mercurial currents of the Atlantic Ocean around the world, the treasure hunters end up in Hawaii. A classical music fanatic and long-time resident of the U.S., Schulte weaves in passages about Suzanne Valadon, the woman both Debussy and Eric Satie loved, adding more intrigue to the suspenseful novel. In addition to writing fiction, Schulte is a prolific translator who has worked on Anne Rice and Kurt Vonnegut among others. Contact Barbara Giller (vertrieb @picus.at).
Though the main character in Polish author Ignacy Karpowicz’s second novel dies on the first page, The Miracle (Czarne) is not at all crime or horror fiction. Ordinary in all other ways, the corpse of Mikolaj doesn’t get cold, rather it maintains a healthy 98.6 degrees even as it rests in the chilly morgue. Everyone who comes into contact with the warm body is affected by it, especially his doctor, Anna. She falls in love with Mikolaj and, stealing his key, moves into his apartment. Her new surroundings feel so uncannily familiar that she’s convinced Mikolaj is meant to be her boyfriend. She feels so strongly that when his grandmother calls, instead of explaining what has happened to her grandson, Anna only introduces herself as his new girlfriend. As Anna pokes around Mikolaj’s apartment, she strangely thinks about him in the present tense, wondering how he will react to her moving in with him. She considers his death a minor inconvenience and in a way, sees it as something positive as it will keep them from fighting too much. As he does in his debut novel Uncool which came out in 2005, the author uses an imagined situation to explore the unimaginative lives of everyday people and their problems. Of both novels a critic said Karpowicz writes with “a distinctive, original, and well-developed style.” All rights are currently available. For more information, contact Monika Sznajderman (redakcja@czarne.com.pl).
Russian-born Israeli, Boris Zaidman, uses his personal history as fodder for a well-received debut novel called Hemingway and the Dead-Bird Rain (Am Oved). To describe what it feels like to live in a diasporic culture far from where you’re from, Zaidman alternates perspectives between the tough Tal Shani, a grown man living under the bright lights of Tel Aviv, and his former, younger incarnation, Tolik Sneiderman, a small boy waiting for his grandfather to return from the Gulag in the tiny town of Dnestrograd in the former USSR. A critic says “Zaidman dismantles what there was ‘there,’ and what there is ‘here’ with irony and sometimes cruelty.” Rights have been licensed in French (Gallimard) and German (Berlin Verlag), and an Italian deal is under negotiation. For further details, contact Deborah Guth (Debbi@ithl.org.il) at the Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature.
And across the globe in Korea, a Murakami-esque novel by young writer Bak Ju-yeong has been steadily gaining ground since publication in 2006. How to Live for the Unemployed (Minumsa) reached the top ten on Korean fiction bestseller lists and helped Ju-yeong win the Minumsa-sponsored 30th Today’s Writer Award. The “slightly vegetative and passive” protagonist, Seo-yun, has a pragmatic, almost positive attitude towards her lethargy. Without a job or any desire to overcome the unproductiveness of her life, Seo-yun interacts with the energetic people around her with a sympathetic, but resigned sense of humor. One of them, a man who is trying to rid himself of memories of a failed marriage by selling his ex’s books, strikes a particular chord with the young dreamer and reader. “A utopian novel for the 21st century,” as one critic called it, the novel has sold 15,000 copies in Korea. All rights are available. For more information, contact Michelle Nam (michellenam@minumsa.com).
