Welcome to my first and so far only blog! After a long, dark January, it’s given me a surge of exhilaration to be resuming work with such talented agents and authors. To give you a preview of some of the titles I’ll be featuring in the biggest and most interesting London Book Fair rights list I’ve ever had, below is the first United Agents Foreign Rights Newsletter.
Samantha Harvey’s debut novel THE WILDERNESS is now sold to DVA in Germany (one of Marion Kohler’s first acquisitions since moving to DVA from Karl Blessing Verlag) and to Ambo Anthos in Holland (at auction against two other excellent Dutch publishers).Anna Webber is the primary agent and sold UK rights to Dan Franklin/Cape, also accepting a pre-emptive bid for North American rights from Nan A. Talese/ Doubleday.
Every editor who has acquired THE WILDERNESS was immediately convinced that Samantha Harvey is an author with a brilliant future. I think THE WILDERNESS is one of the most seriously intelligent, astonishingly empathetic, and completely absorbing debut manuscripts I’ve ever read! It deals with Alzheimer’s, not an easy subject by any means, but the way Harvey describes the illness, and what it does, from the point of view of a retired architect named Jake, is courageous, subtle and will forever change how you think about what it means to suffer from this terrifying affliction. Samantha Harvey also actively engages the reader in piecing together the puzzle of a life which simultaneously leads you to think about what your own most precious or lasting memories would be, so that even though the story is very sad, the cumulative effect is utterly satisfying and beautiful.
Anna Webber has also now sold a fascinating and entertaining new non-fiction book by Trevor Norton, SMOKING EARS AND SCREAMING TEETH: The Human Compulsion to Walk in Harm’s Way, on proposal to Century/Random House (UK and Commonwealth rights). The book will tell the stories of scientists, medics, and researchers who have experimented upon themselves or put themselves in astonishing danger in order to further their discoveries. Trevor Norton is the author of two acclaimed previous books, mostly recently a memoir about his love for the sea, “Under Water to Get out of the Rain”, of which John Banville wrote “To plunge into this book is to experience a glorious drenching. It is erudite, funny, weird and endearing.”
Simon Trewin has taken on representation of Claire Kilroy (left) , one of the most intriguing upcoming talents to emerge from the ever-vibrant Irish literary scene. Her most recent novel “Tenderwire” received widespread critical acclaim and her forthcoming novel, teasingly entitled DRAFT seems set to build on that reputation. Simon has now sold UK rights to Angus Cargill at Faber and the manuscript might be ready before the end of March. You can read an interview with Claire Kilroy
Caroline Dawnay has sold a major new non-fiction proposal by James Buchan, THE REVOLUTION IN IRAN AND ITS CONSEQUENCES, to Roland Philipps/John Murray and North American rights have quickly been snapped up by The Free Press for a six-figure sum, in an exciting auction involving four publishers (Doubleday, Viking, FSG)! The book will be a “philosophical” history of the Iranian Revolution that will portray the chief characters and their actions, while also describing what ordinary people were saying and thinking, taking the reader through each moment of the revolution and up to the present. The manuscript will be completed by 2010, at around the same time that the author predicts that Iran will test its first nuclear device. James Buchan was the Financial Times’ correspondent in Iran for ten years and has studied Persian culture and language extensively. He is also the author of award-winning, critically acclaimed works of both non-fiction and fiction. His philosophical book about money, “Frozen Desire” (1997) won the Duff Cooper Award, and his biography “Adam Smith: And the Pursuit of Perfect Liberty” was published with great reviews by Profile in 2006. James Buchan’s last novel, “A Good Place to Die”(published by Harvill in 1999 and by Houghton Mifflin/US as “The Persian Bride”), was a thriller and love story set in the Shah’s Iran with brilliant reviews on both sides of the Atlantic. Peter Millar wrote in The Times (London) “Buchan maps out the tragedy of modern Iran with sympathy and understanding and the ending has a perfect bittersweet poignancy.” The New York Times review described James Buchan as “a daring, imaginative writer” with “a nuanced understanding of both the political and cultural landscapes of the region.” James Buchan’s next novel, THE GATE OF AIR, will be published by MacLehose Press in September 2008, and I will be featuring both this intriguing English ghost story and THE REVOLUTION IN IRAN at LBF.
Caroline Dawnay has also sold a short and illuminating new book, THE USES AND ABUSES OF HISTORY, by the award-winning and best-selling historian Margaret Macmillan (“The Peacemakers” and “Nixon and Mao”). UK rights are sold to Andrew Franklin/Profile, US rights to Kate Medina/Random House, and Canada to Penguin. The edited manuscript will be ready in one month and after reading it you will know never to take a politician’s quoting of history at face value.
And in a major deal with HarperCollins/UK, Caroline Dawnay has also sold on proposal a first book by a brilliant and very promotable 26-year-old historian, Dan Snow. THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM will bring to life the most dramatic and significant campaign of the great war of 1759, which Churchill described as the first “world war” since it was the first conflict in history to be fought simultaneously around the globe. This will focus on the battle between the French and British over North America which resulted in Britain rising to worldwide hegemony, to English becoming the world’s language, and to British ideas of law, democracy, and economics being adopted by the majority of the world’s population. After winning a double first from Balliol College, Oxford, Dan Snow joined the BBC to research, write and present military history. The first BBC series of “Battlefield Britain” which Dan Snow co-presented with his father, Peter Snow, won a BAFTA award and was described by the Observer as “the best history series of recent times”. Penguin Canada will publish THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM in Canada and also controls US and French rights. The manuscript is due in June 2008.
Spanish rights to THE WAGNER CLAN by Jonathan Carr are now sold to Turner Livros, who will publish in Spain next year as a lead title. Faber published THE WAGNER CLAN last autumn to rave reviews and there were recently also great reviews in the US where Grove Atlantic published in December: “Fiendishly enjoyable” - Laura Miller in Salon.com; “Lively and wry” - The New York Times Book Review; “Engaging…levelheaded and meticulous” - The New Yorker. Hoffmann und Campe is publishing soon in Germany and de Bezige Bij in The Netherlands. Latvian rights are sold to Diena.
Japanese rights to THE UNCOMMON READER by Alan Bennett are now sold to Hakusuisha (via The English Agency), bringing Alan Bennett’s foreign sales up to a record 21 languages in total. THE UNCOMMON READER is an international bestseller, with over 250,000 copies sold in hardcover in the UK, over 50,000 copies in the US, and 70,000 copies sold in Italy. Rights are still available in Greece.
BESTSELLERS
Fiona Neill’s debut novel, THE SECRET LIFE OF A SLUMMY MUMMY, was a bestseller in hardcover last year and is now an even bigger bestseller in paperback with 200,000 copies in print. It was also a bestseller in Holland, where Bruna sold over 20,000 copies in the first trade edition, and they have now contracted for Fiona Neill’s second novel before the manuscript has even been delivered (it’s due at the end of this year, possibly before Frankfurt 08). We’ve also just accepted a Portuguese pre-empt for THE SECRET LIFE OF A SLUMMY MUMMY, the first foreign deal to be negotiated by my assistant, Lettie Ransley, who will be covering Portugal from now on. The publisher is Oficina do Livro. This makes 13 languages for SLUMMY MUMMY with rights also recently sold in Japan and still available in Spain, Norway, Finland, Brazil…
Speaking of Brazil, we’re now delighted to be working with Tassy Barham as a sub-agent for Brazil. Tassy founded her agency in 1999 on her return to London from Brazil where she worked for 5 years as an editor at Objetiva.
Another bestselling debut also represented by Simon Trewin is THE SECRET DIARY OF A DEMENTED HOUSEWIFE, by Niamh Greene. This account of the trials and tribulations of a stay-at-home 
mom was the most successful Irish debut of 2007, a Top 5 trade paperback and a Number 1 paperback in Ireland, spending more than 4 weeks in the UK Top 40. The massmarket paperback was an instant bestseller last year and there are now over 150,000 copies sold, with sales still going strong at 3 – 4,500 copies a week. OK Magazine called it ‘brilliantly astute’, while Irish Times Magazine described it as ‘Bridget Jones with kids’. German rights to were just pre-empted by Goldmann. The German editor, Katrin Stubbe, wrote with her offer: “I had such fun with this hilarious book and I only needed to cite a few passages to convince the whole editorial office that we definitely want this book!” Rights were previously sold in Italy to Newton & Compton and in Bulgaria to ERA Media. And Niamh’s success is set to continue! Her eagerly anticipated next novel, CONFESSIONS OF A DEMENTED HOUSEWIFE will be delivered soon, and is set for publication in Summer 2008.You can read more about Niamh Greene here.
A new edition of Paul McKenna’s bestselling diet book, I CAN MAKE YOU THIN, has shot straight onto the bestseller list, cementing this book as the longest running bestseller out of any other non-fiction titles in the UK, with over 900,000 copies in sales. It is also reported to be the most effective of all diet books with a success rate of over 70%.I CAN MAKE YOU THIN has also been a bestseller in Italy and Germany. Paul McKenna’s newest book, I CAN MAKE YOU RICH, was an instant bestseller last autumn with over 70,000 copies sold in hardcover and I’m sure the paperback edition coming out from Bantam/UK in May/June will be even bigger. In this first month at United Agents, Lettie and I have put through 13 new deals for Paul McKenna’s books which means he will be translated into 20 languages. Rights are still available in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Portugal, Spain/Latin America, France, The Netherlands, and several smaller markets.
REVIEWS AND PRIZE LISTINGS
Brilliant reviews on three continents for A PERFECT WAITER!
Alain Claude Sulzer’s novel, A PERFECT WAITER, was one of the most beautiful, elegant yet erotic and heart-breaking, and mysterious novels I read last year and is now getting rave reviews in the UK, US, and Australia with favourable comparisons to Henry James, Thomas Mann, and Kazuo Ishiguro.A PERFECT WAITER was first published in Germany by Editions Epoca and is now published by Bloomsbury UK and USA.This is first time this Swiss author has been published outside of Germany and we can now say that A PERFECT WAITER truly is an international breakout!
The Irish Times review is especially wonderful:“As measured and as architecturally conceived as anything by Henry James, Sulzer evokes the longing, while avoiding the melodrama of a love story defeated by multiple betrayals. The technical skill, which is considerable, never obscures the heady emotional weight…Cool and rather brutal for all its surface elegance, the story is complicated and unfolds like a table cloth being shaken and spread out across a table. The facts are interesting and always plausible, yet Sulzer’s real achievement is to explore a level of grief experienced and endured that has become almost, but not quite, desensitised…an insistent work such as this melancholy, shocking tale that burrows as deep as pain itself.”
And also The Guardian:“The real perfect waiter of the title is, I suspect, the author himself. Like his hero, he is unobtrusive and alarming in equal measure, and on the evidence of this, his first book to be translated into English, he does his job not just with great polish, but with real heart.” Since this Guardian review appeared in January, A PERFECT WAITER has been in the top ten on The Guardian online bookshop bestseller list!
Now great reviews are also appearing in the US in Publisher’s Weekly: “Sulzer sure-handedly layers the past on the present, gradually opening windows on both. The pieces fall together like bits of a puzzle, with a full portrait of Erneste and the truth about his relationship with Jakob coming together only at the end, powerfully.”And this very intelligent review in Bookforum: “This novel, Sulzer’s fourth, is a highly choreographed waltz of emotional blackmail… Sulzer has written an absorbing miniature. He so thoroughly inhabits Erneste that the waiter’s muted inner life proves more gripping than the overtly dramatic scenes of betrayal and attempted extortion. It is the whisper, not the shout, that grabs the attention.”
This wonderful review in Sydney Morning Herald sums up why this beautiful book transcends the sense of being bound to any particular country and why it stands out as a “simply told love story” for anyone who loves literature, and who has loved another person, either male or female: “A Perfect Waiter recalls, variously, Thomas Mann’s Death In Venice, Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains Of The Day and Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader. It evokes the idea and the atmosphere of western Europe rather than of any specific country…It’s difficult to explain just why this book should be so haunting. Part of it is the very simplicity and austerity of the writing, which mirrors the austerity of Erneste’s own life…Mostly, however, it’s about the ruthlessness of love and desire, and the long trudge across a desert of pain that can follow in their wake, something about which almost everyone could tell their own sad story.” Translation rights to A PERFECT WAITER sold last year to Ambos Anthos/Holland, Actes Sud/France, El Aleph/Spain, Quidnovi/Portugal, and now to Muza/Poland. We’re now submitting in Italy, Greece, Brazil, Israel, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Japan.
TWO UNITED AGENTS’ AUTHORS LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE 2008!
Tessa Hadley’s beautiful novel THE MASTER BEDROOM is longlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2008! Jonathan Cape and Metropolitan Books/US published this exquisite story of a middle-aged woman’s affair with a sixteen-year-old boy in August 2007 with outstanding reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, including the cover review of the New York Times Book Review: “The novel is a chess game of slow-burn erotic manuevers that produce tantalizingly unpredictable outcomes.” Foreign rights so far have only sold in Lithuania and Latvia and now is the time for publishers across Europe to seriously consider or reconsider publishing this exceptionally talented author at the height of her powers. Congratulations to Tessa Hadley and her primary agent, Caroline Dawnay!You can read more about THE MASTER BEDROOM and the Orange Broadband Prize here. The longlist aims to celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing. The shortlist will be announced on April 15th and the winner will receive a check for £30,000 and a trophy announced at a ceremony in London on June 4th.
A second United Agents author, Scarlett Thomas, is also on the Orange Prize longlist for her novel THE END OF MR. Y (Canongate controls translation rights and has already sold them in over 20 languages). Scarlett’s primary agent is Simon Trewin. Canongate is also now selling translation rights to Scarlett’s previous novel, “PopCo”, while I am handling rights to Scarlett’s earlier novel, “Bright Young Things”.
PETITE ANGLAISE charms the critics and proves she’s not only one of the World’s 50 Top Bloggers, but also a top new author!
Last week was the first week of UK publicity for Catherine Sanderson’s brilliant PETITE ANGLAISE and it was nearly unprecedented coverage for a debut with full page photographs and serialization in The Sunday Times, an article written by Catherine for the Observer travel section with an accompanying podcast and slideshow, an interview on BBC Woman’s Hour, a first-person article in April issue of Marie Claire, and much more.
The first reviews in Daily Express and Guardian Unlimited comparing Catherine Sanderson to the best travel authors such as Peter Mayle confirm that the book really does transcend her blog and that Catherine Sanderson has a brilliant start as an author.
Daily Express: “A winner. Written with breathtaking candour, it will appeal to existing fans and new readers alike. Far from being a rehash of the blog, it’s a story of a love affair…Like Peter Mayle, author of A Year in Provence, she brings France to life on the page.” Guardian Unlimited: “Light, frank and tremendous fun. In the evocative early chapters Sanderson captures the intensity of her first impressions of Paris: the taste of bitter espresso, the acid sting of cheap red wine on her tongue…She goes on to write about parenthood with great honesty: the joy, the routine, the frustration… Equally the thrill and detailed ordinariness of her affair – desire, lies, the practicalities of hotels and confusion of buying condoms for the first time in years – is told in direct, unadorned prose… Like all good writers, her work simply enables us to appreciate the diversity, possibilities, trials and beauty of life.”
You can read the full interview/review and see a slideshow of Catherine Sanderson in Paris and see her BBC Breakfast interview here : Rights sold previously to: Iceland/JPV, Tammi/Finland, Goldmann/Germany, Miskal/Israel, Sonzogno/Italy, de Bezige Bij/Netherlands, Albatros/Poland. Spiegel & Grau/Doubleday will publish in the US in June 2008 and we’re now considering an offer from a French publisher! There’s also interest in Spain and this week Spain’s largest newspaper, El Pais, features an interview with Catherine Sanderson.
Wonderful reviews for Nell Leyshon’s second novel, DEVOTION!
Award-winning playwright Nell Leyshon’s second novel, DEVOTION was one of the most absorbing and heart-breaking manuscripts I read last year and I’m surprised that there have been no foreign rights sold yet. (Perhaps because the manuscript was submitted during the summer?) This spare yet intense story of the breakdown of a family reminded me of M.J. Hyland’s Booker-shortlisted novel, “Carry Me Down”, which Canongate sold in several languages. DEVOTION is now published by Picador with great first reviews, especially in the Observer: “Heart-wrenching…Leyshon’s talent for dialogue is evident in her novel. Each voice and the corresponding internal world is distinct and convincing and the narrative…moves at an engaging pace.” And also in Easy Living: “Beautifully written, Devotion is detailed and free-flowing, reminding us just how close chaos can be to the surface. The shocking, emotional ending will leave you gasping for air.” Nell Leyshon’s primary agent is Pat Kavanagh.
Serious praise for two new authors represented by Anna Webber! 
Adam Foulds (left who already won a Betty Trask Award last year for his debut novel, THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES (Weidenfeld), is now one of four authors shortlisted for the 2008 Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. As announced in the Sunday Times article “Authors first spotted by our judges have gone on to win or be shortlisted for a host of other prizes (past winners include Zadie Smith, Caryl Phillips, Sarah Waters)…Adam Foulds, a graduate of the creative-writing school that produced Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro, has concentrated in his delightful and delicately written fiction debut…on two memorable oddballs…” The Sunday Times review of THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES said “Not only is this extremely fine novel written with a wonderful clarity and precision, but Foulds inhabits his two very different characters with absolute conviction.”The winner will be announced at a banquet on April 6th! The only foreign sale for THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES was in Israel to Achuzat Bayit.
In April, Jonathan Cape (Robin Robertson) will publish a Adam Foulds’s ambitious narrative sequence, The Broken Word, based on the Mau Mau insurgency against the British colonial administration in 1950s Kenya.This stunning epic poem has already drawn praise from Adam Thirwell (“A major work”) and noted poets including Andrew Motion, Michael Longley, Christopher Reid, Ruth Padel, Craig Raine (“The Broken Word is a first-class, word-perfect, brilliant debut which doesn’t put a toe wrong.The long poem is the most testing of poetic forms but Adam Foulds passes the test triumphantly.”). Adam Foulds is well into an intriguing second novel - watch this space for more about him later this spring.
Another of Anna Webber’s debut authors, David Szalay, who is also being published by Jonathan Cape (Dan Franklin) now has a fantastic review in the Financial Times for his first novel LONDON AND THE SOUTH-EAST with favourable comparisons to Joshua Ferris (“And Then We Came to the End”) and David Mamet (“Glengarry Glen Ross”): “Comedy has been the most common vehicle to explore the drudgery of work…Canadian-born David Szalay’s superb debut novel…adds an edge of nastiness to the humour…riveting.” Until December 2008, ILA was handling foreign rights to LONDON AND THE SOUTH-EAST (and sold Dutch rights on the manuscript to Mouria). I’m delighted to now be handling David Szalay’s foreign rights. As I read LONDON AND THE SOUTH-EAST, I’m amazed by the pitch-perfect dialogue and seamless sense of timing and humour, underpinned by a rare depth to the characters. It sounds like David is in the midst of writing a second novel that will be even more international and intriguing.
FILM NEWS
Danny Wallace’s next book, FRIENDS LIKE THESE has been optioned for film by Ruby Films. Miramax Films and Film4 have struck a development and production deal with Alison Owen and Paul Trijbits of Ruby Films, the British company behind The Other Boleyn Girl. The three-year pact gives Miramax and Film4 first look to co-develop and co-produce Ruby features. Miramax will take worldwide rights to movies made under the partnership. FRIENDS LIKE THESE follows Danny on an epic journey around the world to reunite his best friends from schooldays. It is now on submission to Danny Wallace’s option publishers: Goldmann/Germany, Mondadori/Italy, Unieboek/Netherlands, Forum/Sweden. His UK publisher, Ebury, will publish with a big campaign in July 2008. Meanwhile Danny Wallace’s previous book YES MAN will be widely released in December 2008 as a Warner Brothers/Heyday film starring Jim Carrey.
Ruby Films has also optioned Posy Simmonds’ brilliant graphic novel, TAMARA DREWE, which Cape published last autumn with rave reviews. So far rights have sold to Denoel/France, De Harmonie/The Netherlands, and Sins Entido/Spain. Houghton Mifflin will publish TAMARA DREWE in the US in September 2008 and is marketing is as “that rare graphic novel for grown-ups, for anyone whose appetite for smart, literate, and literary graphic novels has been been whetted by Gemma Bovery, Fun Home, The Rabbi’s Cat and Persepolis.”
NEW MANUSCRIPTS AND SUBMISSIONS
Fiction:
ONE MORNING LIKE A BIRD by Andrew Miller - The new novel by the author of Booker short-listed “Oxygen” is one of the most exquisite and perceptive novels I’ve read in years. Set in 1940-41 Tokyo, on the brink of WWII, it is a fascinating and authentic window into Japanese life and culture, inspired by the years that Andrew Miller lived in Tokyo and also infused by Andrew’s own recent experience of unexpected fatherhood. Yet the grace and subtlety of Andrew’s prose and the haunting images of characters clinging to beauty and safety as their precarious lives are infringed by war, make this a novel that transcends all boundaries of time and place. Sceptre will publish ONE MORNING LIKE A BIRD in September 2008.
THE HALF-KNOWN LIFE by Simonetta Wenkert– From the moment I read the first sentence of this sensual, witty, and ultimately redemptive novel, I have not wanted to put it down, “Interestingly, the girls met Theo on the day of the penis in the National Gardens…” And I’ve been continuously absorbed, surprised and moved with every page. The Bookseller recently featured THE HALF-KNOWN LIFE as one of the top fiction titles for June 2008: “A story of love, betrayal and secrets, as a happily married north London mother meets a young Iranian asylum-seeker on a park bench and takes her, and her baby son, home.” The UK editor, Alexandra Pringle, thinks it is fantastic and Bloomsbury will publish THE HALF-KNOWN LIFE as a lead summer novel.
THE GLASS ROOM by Simon Mawer – I’m now engrossed in this fascinating, passionate story of idealism, love, marriage, infidelity, and displacement set in 1930s Czechoslovakia as it is annexed by Nazi Germany. This is the first novel I’ve read by Simon Mawer (acclaimed author of “Mendel’s Dwarf” and “The Gospel of Judas”) and I can immediately see that he is a true master of historical fiction, beautifully composing each scene and making big themes of modernist aesthetics and 20th century history feel intimate, stirring, and new. I can also see why Simon Mawer’s longtime editor, Richard Beswick and his agent, Charles Walker, think it’s something really extraordinary. Little, Brown will publish in January 2009. THE GLASS ROOM is inspired by the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, a beautiful glass and steel family home created by the architect Mies van der Rohe in 1930. You can view the house here and read more about Simon Mawer 
MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY by John Boyne– One of my first big submissions from United Agents is John Boyne’s new adult novel, a retelling of the classic high seas adventure, “Mutiny on the Bounty”. Bill Scott Kerr, the editor, and everyone at Transworld who has read MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY is overjoyed to be publishing it this Spring (May 2008), and John Boyne’s primary agent, Simon Trewin, has now sold Transworld the UK rights to two more adult novels. As soon as I started reading MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY, I wished I could put everything else aside to read only this! It reminds me of the classic adventures that captured my imagination many years ago, and affirms John Boyne as one of the greatest storytellers writing today. Narrated by a fifteen-year-old cabin boy named John Jacob Turnstile, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY is part-adventure story, part-historical drama, part-thriller, and is filled with colour and vivid detail about life at sea in the 18thcentury.
So far rights to MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY have sold to Canada: Doubleday; Germany: S. Fischer Verlag; Italy: Rizzoli; The Netherlands: Arena; Spain: Salamandra; USA: St. Martin’s Press. I will soon be submitting the final manuscript in France and it is already on submission in Scandinavia and going out soon in the rest of the world.
John Boyne’s previous novel, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, is an international bestseller with rights sold in thirty-two languages and over 1.3 million copies sold worldwide! The Spanish edition published last year by Salamandra has sold over 670,000 copies! In Germany, S. Fischer has sold over 60,000 copies. The UK paperback has sold over 100,000 copies. Later this year, sometime between June-October 2008, will be the release of the Miramax film, produced by David Heyman and directed by Mark Herman who also wrote the screenplay. I saw an advance screening and it’s remarkably faithful to the novel yet a very moving and beautiful film in its own right. Each scene builds perfectly to the staggering climax and with riveting performances, especially from newcomer Asa Butterfield who plays Bruno; the actress, Vera Farmiga, who is his mother; and David Thewlis who is his father.
A SNOWBALL IN HELL by Christopher Brookmyre (left) – After all the serious changes of the past few months, and a pile of heavy manuscripts to read, both Lettie and I are enjoying the wickedly funny comedy and verbal pyrotechnics on dazzling display in Christopher Brookmyre’s newest thriller. It’s also a perfect antidote to shallow celebrity idolatry with wild twists and a surprisingly romantic love story featuring a serial killer who targets B-list celebrities and a policewoman who is secretly in love with a mysterious bank robber. It’s no wonder Time Out has dubbed Chris Brookmyre “Literature’s answer to Quentin Tarrantino”! Little, Brown will publish A SNOWBALL IN HELL in hardcover in August 2008 and it’s certain to be a bestseller.
THE MINUTES OF THE LAZARUS CLUB by Tony Pollard – I’ve just started reading this debut novel of intrigue and murder in 1857 London. It’s about a secret society whose members are some of the most intellectually daring and unconventional in Victorian Britain, including Charles Darwin and Isambard Kingdom Brunel. The narrator is an ambitious young surgeon who gets drawn into the Lazarus Club’s mysterious and dark conspiracy. The detail of 19th century practices in surgery and forensics is fascinating with gory anatomy lessons and mutilated prostitutes floating in the Thames. Primary agent, Jim Gill, sold UK rights to Alex Clarke/Michael Joseph. 
Non-fiction:
WHERE DO UNDERPANTS COME FROM by Joe Bennett (left) – Award-winning New Zealand based columnist and travel writer hailed by Bill Bryson as “Brilliant”, “deadly accurate and absurdly funny” tells you all you need to know — in fact, probably more — about this mystery of global commerce. Leaving his supermarket trolley behind, Joe embarks on an odyssey to the new factory of the world, China, to trace his underpants back to their source. Along the way he discovers the extraordinarily balanced and intricate web of contacts and exchanges that makes global trade possible — and which is rapidly elevating China to the status of world economic superpower. He also grapples with chopsticks, challenges his own prejudices and marvels at the contrasts in one of the world’s oldest but fastest changing societies. I’ve read the first six chapters and they’re a more hilarious yet informative account of contemporary China than I’ve read anywhere in the media.
WHY US? by James Le Fanu – Perhaps the most controversial book on the Rights List, there was a huge amount of interest in this at the Frankfurt Book Fair and the manuscript is now final and ready to submit. This major new view of the past one hundred and fifty years of evolutionary biology will cause a considerable stir, challenging the works of Dennett, Dawkins, Shermer, Sulloway, E.O. Wilson, and it will be unlike every other Darwin book published in anticipation of his bicentennial. James Le Fanu’s first book, “The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine”, was the surprise winner of the Los Angeles Times Science Prize (1999) and this new book is bound to receive even more widespread attention. It’s also an eloquently and accessibly written account of what makes human beings more peculiar and creative than any other species.
FABERGE’S EGGS by Toby Faber – Just in time for Easter, this is the story of Faberge’s Imperial Easter eggs - of their maker, of the tsars who commissioned them, of the middlemen who sold them and of the collectors who fell in love with them. It’s a story of meticulous craftsmanship and unimaginable wealth, of lucky escapes and mysterious disappearances, and ultimately of greed, tragedy and devotion. Moreover, it is a story that mirrors the history of twentieth-century Russia - a satisfying arc that sees eggs made for the tsars, sold by Stalin, bought by Americans and now, finally, returned to post-communist Russia.There is also an intriguing element of mystery surrounding the masterpieces. Of the fifty ‘Tsar Imperial’ eggs known to have been made, eight are currently unaccounted for. Two others have only come to light in recent years - one had been in a private London collection since 1927; the other was sitting in a Russian mineral museum, thought to be a table-lamp. The fate of the remaining eggs provides endless scope for speculation and forgeries. Toby Faber has been described as a restless and inquisitive storyteller, his prose ‘peppered with anecdotes, fascinating detail and a dry English wit’. His previous book, STRADIVARIUS, was hailed by critics as ‘more enthralling, earthy and illuminating than any fiction could possibly be’. It featured on the New York Times bestseller list and sold in seven languages to Editora RCB/Brazil, The Commercial Press/ China, Potamos/Greece, De Bezige Bij/Holland, RCS Libri/Italy, Hakuyosha/Japan, Thinking Tree Publishing Company/Korea.
Jessica Craig
United Agents
London
