PEOPLE Kristin Cochrane will take over as CEO of Random House Canada following the retirement of Brad Martin on June 30. Martin has been CEO since 2007. At Lonely Planet, CEO Daniel Houghton has stepped down. He will become CEO of marketing agency Pyxl. Brant Rumble has joined Hachette Books as Executive Editor. He was…Continue Reading
After a four year sabbatical from novel-writing, the prolific and provocative Juan José Millás returns this month to sweep the Spanish bestseller lists. A slim novel at just 135 pages, Laura and Julio takes place in the author’s unusual world of the Borgesian double, exploring the idea of the original versus the copy with the…Continue Reading
In its first two weeks in print, He Who Blinks is Afraid of Death (Aschehoug) sold 4,000 copies in Denmark, a huge number for a debut novel. An autobiographical narrative set in the 1960s, the novel tracks the odd life of a young boy whose German mother is schizophrenic. His Danish father, an insurance agent,…Continue Reading
Not So Foreign Family Problems Fill the Lists The bright blue and red cover of YOU’RE JOKING, MONSIEUR TANNER (l’Olivier), French author Jean-Paul Dubois‘ most recent bestseller, shows a man on hands and knees who’s painted himself into a corner. This is Paul Tanner, a wildlife documentary filmmaker who suddenly inherits the grand family manse,…Continue Reading
Jealousy, Hope, Love, Frustration, Pinochet & the PLO Craftsman, plumber, brick-layer, ironware merchant, script writer, filmmaker, and now novelist, Nan Aurousseau has hewed his vast trove of on-the-job tales into a thrilling novel called Overalls. Like so many beleaguered artists, the adroit Frenchman wrote the autobiographical bestseller (not a memoir, mind you) while down and…Continue Reading
Road Rage Hits Spain, the Devil Deals in Sweden, and a Burglary Stumps Denmark A minor fender bender on a Monday morning leads a frazzled female executive named Sonsoles to hop out of her convertible and let loose with a string of insults and profanities that would make even the most grizzled truck driver blush…Continue Reading
Walk on the Wild Side Sophie’s Choice in Sweden, Saddam Does Denmark, And Russia’s Crime Babe Rides Again The co-creator of the longest-running Swedish soap opera in history sends white-hot sparks of sensuality shooting over Scandinavia this month with “a clearly political manifesto disguised as an entertaining literary soap.” In Stars Without Vertigo, now bounding…Continue Reading
My Generation Down and Out in Denmark, Angot Gasps in France, And Sweden’s Crime Duo Hits 30 Junkies, pushers, ‘narco-tarts’, and their degenerate demi-monde come crackling to life in Denmark, as Jakob Ejersbo’s novel Nordkraft (the title translates roughly as “Northern Power”) barrels up the list with its “oddly encouraging” tale of a generation searching…Continue Reading
The Flying Dutchmen De Winter Does Hollywood, Holland’s Huck Finn, And Bar Chickens Cluck in Spain Hailed as the Dutch-European postwar generation’s answer to John Irving, the popular Netherlands writer Leon de Winter has scored that mega-coup all scribblers secretly dream about: his own film starring Burt Reynolds. Cued up for its theatrical première in…Continue Reading
Women’s Work Poland Gets the Menses, Millás Sizzles Spain, And Hareven Labors for Love in Israel Serotonin levels are plunging this month all over Poland, where the delightfully demented author Janusz Wisniewski comes down with Tense Syndromes (otherwise translated as Premenstrual Syndrome; the original title was Menstruation, but the Warsaw publisher deemed it “too shocking”),…Continue Reading
