BUSY WEEKS OF NEW DEALS - May 12th-30th, 2008

Italian and Dutch deals for Simon Mawer’s glorious new novel, THE GLASS ROOM!

Today Italian rights sold to Neri Pozza who made an impressive best offer to welcome Simon Mawer (pictured left) onto their list of sophisticated historical fiction and non-fiction by renowned authors.  Even though two other publishers previously published Simon Mawer in Italy, Neri Pozza sees THE GLASS ROOM as a strong departure from his earlier books and will publish as a lead title with bestseller potential for Summer or Christmas 2009.  Meanwhile, last week, Dutch rights were pre-empted by Ambo Anthos! They love THE GLASS ROOM so much that they want to bring Simon Mawer back onto their excellent list even though they published one of his earlier novels, “Mendel’s Dwarf”, 10 years ago. Publisher Chris Herschdorfer wrote with his offer “I’ve had a wonderful reading experience…I love the idea of using architecture as a metaphor for the future, change and hope… But also pointing the way forward, hoping for a new and unbridled future in which people will have left the ‘’dark ages’’ and live in transparent, new times… The oncoming threat of Nazism, slowly creeping closer and leaving its mark on everyone is very well done and harrowing. The way people hope it will blow over, but others are aware of the deadly threat and take measures. The richness of detail, be it describing architecture or the complicated matters of the heart and relationships is magnificent and I was very happy to see it being pulled off as storylines come full circle and there seems to be light at the ending of the story.” With Portuguese rights already swiftly pre-empted after the London Book Fair by Civilizacao/Portugal (scroll down for my previous posting below), Lettie and I expect Simon Mawer’s masterpiece will continue captivating publishers across Europe! Simon Mawer and his primary agent, Charles Walker, are delighted with the international response so far.

Dutch rights to THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES by Adam Foulds now sold to Lidewijde Paris for her new literary fiction imprint, Ailantus! I’ve been wanting to have an author with Lidewijde ever since I first met her in the midst of editing the Dutch translation of “Cloud Atlas” when she was at Querido. I was delighted when she last year started a new literary fiction imprint at a different, family-owned company called Boom Publishers Amsterdam. Ailantus means “tree of heaven” and the first catalogue for Summer 2008 looks fantastic. Adam Foulds will be one of the first authors Lidewijde has acquired from the UK (the other notable UK author she will publish at Ailantus is David Mitchell). There is still strong interest in THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES from other European editors I saw in London and Turin. Watch this blog for news about Adam Foulds’ intriguing second novel, JOHN’S DREAM.  His agent Anna Webber will be wrapping up a fantastic UK deal very soon.

French rights to Samantha Harvey’s debut novel, THE WILDERNESS, are now sold in a pre-empt to Editions du Panama! Du Panama is a great young independent publisher and Florence Barrau is building an impressive list of strong new voices in international fiction including Chris Killen (Canongate), Kevin Brockmeier (Knopf), and Jonny Glynn (Portobello Books). In my first posting earlier this year I wrote about the fantastic first deals for THE WILDERNESS (also represented by Anna Webber). Just to recap all the wonderful things that have happened over the past few months: Dan Franklin/Cape bought UK rights and will publish February 5, 2009, Lorna Owen of Nan A. Talese Books/Doubleday pre-empted in the US and will publish February 17, 2009 with a significant first printing of 30,000 copies (extraordinary for a debut novel and by an new English author); Marion Kohler/DVA will publish as a lead title in Germany and Chris Herschdorfer/Ambo Anthos will publish as a lead title in The Netherlands. Hebrew rights recently sold to Keter. And UK audio rights are also sold to W.H. Howes (very unusual for this to happen so quickly or even at all for a literary debut novel, and on an early manuscript). Clearly, THE WILDERNESS, is a rare novel that strikes deep and immediate chords in almost everyone who reads it. I personally consider it to be one of the most courageous, original, beautiful, and intense manuscripts I’ve ever read. Samantha Harvey (pictured above left in a recent photo taken by her boyfriend, Rick Hewes) has profoundly changed the way I think about people who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease or memory loss, and even about my own fragmented puzzle of a life. I’m sure that she has a brilliant future ahead of her. It was wonderful to have Dan Franklin and Anna Webber similarly raving about Samantha’s writing at The London Book Fair and this new French deal is great for following up on all the interest. Rights to THE WILDERNESS are still available in many countries including Italy, Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland.

French rights to PETITE ANGLAISE by Catherine Sanderson are now sold to Beatrice Duval/Calmann-Levy for her list of quality fiction/memoir for intelligent women! Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling travel memoir, “Eat Pray Love”, is another good example of this which Calmann-Levy is successfully publishing. With her offer, Beatrice wrote: “I loved PETITE ANGLAISE, I think it has a big potential as a book from an English point of view, but without the usual clichés on the French, + a strong female point of view that I am sure women will appreciate. We also want to commit to a long-term deal with her, I perfectly understand that PETITE ANGLAISE is not a one-shot and that she is ready to a well-deserved career in writing.” In my very first blog posting below there are links to the fantastic UK reviews and publicity (you can also find out all the news about PETITE ANGLAISE on her internationally famous blog). This debut memoir that reads like a novel will be published in the US (jacket above) in June (Spiegel & Grau/Doubleday). There is already a great pre-pub US review in Kirkus: “Her seamless, dramatically paced narration reads beautifully, and her ear for dialogue is excellent. Evocative descriptions of Paris are an added plus. Soap-operatic navel-gazing in engaging prose.” Translation rights previously sold in Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Israel, Finland, and Iceland, but of all of these having a great French publisher means the most to Catherine since the book is about her lifelong love affair with France where she has overcome many obstacles to make Paris her endlessly enticing home.  Primary agent Simon Trewin’s reaction when I told him the news of this long-awaited French deal was “Yay yay!”

The first foreign deal for THE MINUTES OF THE LAZARUS CLUB by Tony Pollard is in Russia to AST (via Synopsis Literary Agency, Moscow)! AST is one of Russia’s biggest publishers with a great list of bestselling commercial fiction including Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”, Elizabeth Kostova’s “The Historian”, and Kate Mosse’s “Labyrinth”.  There is still a lot of interest in THE MINUTES OF THE LAZARUS CLUB from the European editors I saw in London and Turin, and it was just featured in The Bookseller as a first fiction highlight for August. There’s a picture of the Michael Joseph cover (pictured left) with this summary: “Author Tony Pollard is a forensic archaeologist, and a presenter on the BBC’s “Two Men in a Trench”. His debut novel is a historical thriller set in Victorian London. The Lazarus Club is composed of some very fine minds-Darwin, Babbage and Brunel among them-but young ambitious Dr. George Philips is about to encounter a dark conspiracy.” I think you’d be hard-pressed to read a more confident, suspenseful, and authentic historical thriller. Michael Joseph is publishing THE MINUTES OF THE LAZARUS CLUB as the “British historical thriller of the year.”  Penguin just produced unusually elegant and enticing advance reading copies, and in-house enthusiasm signals that they see THE MINUTES OF THE LAZARUS CLUB as a potential bestseller. Primary agent is James Gill.

WHY US?: HOW SCIENCE REDISCOVERED THE MYSTERY OF OURSELVES is now sold in Portugal to Civilizacao! Again, my assistant, Lettie, has secured the first foreign deal for one of our most-requested new submissions (the other being Simon Mawer’s novel, THE GLASS ROOM, which Civilizacao pre-empted the week after LBF). I never knew the Portuguese to be so fast! WHY US is one of the most fascinating and controversial manuscripts I’ve ever read (it’s a provocative challenge to Richard Dawkins and the author, James Le Fanu, is represented by Caroline Dawnay who was Dawkins’ first agent for his first three books including “The Blind Watchmaker”). This major new view of the past one hundred and fifty years of evolutionary biology will be unlike every other Darwin book published in anticipation of his bicentennial. HarperCollins/UK (editor Richard Johnson) and Pantheon/US (editor Dan Frank) expect WHY US? will cause a considerable stir when they publish in February 2009. Not only is it a surprisingly eloquent and beautifully written book, with a strong narrative component telling the story of the protracted quest for the secret of who we are, culminating in the surprising discoveries of the recent past such as the Human Genome Project, but WHY US? profoundly rocked my fundamental assumptions about evolution. It’s a daring philosophical challenge that offers a way of thinking critically and independently in a world that is increasingly polarized. James Le Fanu’s previous book, “The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine” (Little, Brown) won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 1999.

Swift German Pre-empt for UNDER THE PAW: CONFESSIONS OF A CAT MAN by Tom Cox!
I only just submitted this hilarious memoir about the author’s relationships with six cats, and also his wife, Dee, who fortunately adores The Bear, Janet, Ralph, Shipley, Pablo, and Bootsy as much as Tom does. One German editor, Julika Jaenicke of Ullstein, immediately read it and loved it and phoned me a few days later to tell me her whole editorial team loves it. We agreed on a pre-emptive offer and UNDER THE PAW will be published in hardcover on the List imprint that has already made bestsellers in Germany out of entertaining and highly original non-fiction such as “The Game” by Neil Strauss and “The Know-it-All” by A.J. Jacobs. Simon & Schuster is just about to publish UNDER THE PAW in the UK in June (jacket pictured left). Tom Cox, who was formerly a music journalist for The Observer (his columns were published as a previous book, “The Lost Tribes of Pop”), also has a funny blog called “little cat diaries”. I haven’t submitted UNDER THE PAW in any countries besides Germany yet, but with this enthusiastic German pre-empt I’m ready to let Tom Cox and his cats out of the bag into the world! Primary agent is Simon Trewin.

Spanish rights to COUNTERKNOWLEDGE by Damian Thompson are now sold to Critica/Planeta! Wonderful to have this powerful little treatise, that the Guardian described as a “bracing assault” and that Francis Wheen praised as “an invigorating trumpet blast”, still catching on after translation rights sold last year to Einaudi/Italy, Nikkei/Japan, and in Croatia. Norton will publish in the US in September. Atlantic Books published the hardcover in January 2008 and has sold through three printings and 10,000 copies. The paperback (pictured left) will be published in July and is featured in The Bookseller Autumn Paperback Preview as “one to watch” and “an engaging and witty guide in differentiating between fact and opinion”.  You can read more about COUNTERKNOWLEDGE and how to disarm conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science, and fake history on Damian Thompson’s excellent website here.  Primary agent is Simon Trewin.

Lucy Dawson’s bestselling debut, HIS OTHER LOVER, is now sold in Turkey (via Anatolialit) to Artemis, the Turkish publisher of Fiona Neill, Candace Bushnell, Sophie Kinsella, Marian Keyes, and other top women’s fiction!  HIS OTHER LOVER continues to sell strong in the UK with over 35,000 copies sold of Sphere’s trade paperback and it has been reprinted four times since publication in mid-March, a sensational success for a first novel!   So far HIS OTHER LOVER has sold to Rowohlt/Germany, House of Books/Holland, Szo/Hungary, and Avon/HarperCollins/USA.  Lucy Dawson’s primary agent, Sarah Ballard, just told me that Lucy has completed a fantastic second novel, WHAT MY BEST FRIEND DID, which will published by Sphere in early 2009. I’m looking forward to reading this tale of a female betrayal soon. Scroll down to my post-LBF posting for some more great news and links about Lucy Dawson (pictured right). 

THE SECRET LIFE OF A SLUMMY MUMMY by Fiona Neill is now sold in Norway to Gydendal, in a pre-empt! Editor, Cathrine Bakke Bolin, found it a perfect fit for her DROPS series of classy commercial women’s fiction such as Sophie Kinsella, Lauren Weisberger, Lisa Jewell, Melissa Bank, Jane Fallon. This is the 16th translation deal for Fiona Neill’s bestselling debut! I will be featuring her second novel at Frankfurt.  Arrow’s UK paperback edition continues to climb the bestseller lists with Nielsen reporting over 220,000 copies sold since publication in February.

Turin Book Fair

I’m back in London after four days at the Turin Book Fair. It was fun spending time with international publishing friends in a more relaxing atmosphere than Frankfurt or London, with prosecco and wine provided by the rights center at lunchtime and at the end of each day. From my table there was also easy access to sunshine and even a garden. On Saturday I had time before my afternoon meetings to visit an amazing art collection, Pinacoteca Agnelli, on the roof of the former Fiat factory (a short walk from the book fair) and I sat in precious silence surrounded by the most soothing Matisse paintings I’ve ever seen. Also unlike Frankfurt or London fairs, I had time to wander the floor. I enjoyed visiting the Italian publishers’ stands and seeing beautiful books resulting from deals done last year.

Nick Hornby’s newest novel, SLAM, is now published by Guanda. (The paperback, just out from Penguin, is now in the top 20 on the UK bestseller list.) Rights are sold in 26 languages.

It was good seeing Alan Bennett prominently featured at the Adelphi stand. His two essays about a visit to The National Gallery, “Going to the Pictures”, are now published by Adelphi as a miniature book that was one of their top sellers at the Turin Book Fair. THE UNCOMMON READER is also a bestseller for Adelphi in Italy with over 70,000 copies sold, and rights are sold in more languages than Alan Bennett has ever been translated into before - 22 to date. I’ve heard that THE UNCOMMON READER is also selling well in Spain (Anagrama) and in Holland (Mouria).

The Newton Compton stand featured posters for their edition of THE END OF MR. Y by Scarlett Thomas who was at the book fair having even more interviews than I had meetings. I did have several productive meetings with European editors who I was not able to see at the London Book Fair, but I did not envy Scarlett having to answer questions from one Italian journalist after another.  She told me some of the questions were quite bizarre like “If you could eat your book, what would it taste like?”  Italian sales of MR. Y have taken off since a notoriously difficult critic, D’Orrico, compared Scarlett Thomas in a review to Umberto Eco. Scarlett is represented by Simon Trewin at United Agents, but her foreign rights are controlled by Canongate who has sold THE END OF MR. Y in over 25 languages. Newton Compton’s stand also had a poster for Sophia MacDougall’s second book in her Rome trilogy, ROME BURNING, and they also are now publishing Fiona Neill’s bestselling debut THE SECRET LIFE OF A SLUMMY MUMMY.

Also at the book fair, Bompiani was launching the Italian edition of BURMA BOY, the stunning novel about a 14-year-old Nigerian boy, Ali Banana, and his surreal experience of jungle warfare after he enlists with other Nigerians to fight for the British in WWII. BURMA BOY was published in hardcover by Jonathan Cape last spring and is coming out in paperback from Vintage in June. The hardcover drew extraordinary praise from Wole Soyinka, Giles Foden in the Guardian, Ronan Bennett, and in the Times, Observer, etc; and it is Biyi Bandele’s international break-out with publications coming this year and next year in France/Grasset, The Netherlands/de Bezige Bij, Sweden/Leopard, Israel/Kinneret, HarperCollins/USA, Brazil/Record, and even Poland/Rebis. Biyi Bandele is really one of the most incredibly talented authors I’ve ever met or read. He wrote his first novel, “The Man Who Came in From the Back of Beyond”, when he was only 14 and he has since written award-winning plays, three novels, and in 2006 was named by The Independent as one of Africa’s 50 most important artists. Bompiani invited Biyi Bandele to Turin and my only regret of the weekend was that I missed seeing Biyi and his event which was on Sunday evening, after I had to fly back to London.

FOREIGN DEALS AND INTEREST SINCE THE LONDON BOOK FAIR

Portuguese Pre-empt for THE GLASS ROOM by Simon Mawer!
In my first posting back in March I mentioned how engrossed I was by Simon Mawer’s new novel, THE GLASS ROOM, well my assistant, Lettie, loved it too and achieved the first foreign deal for this beautiful masterpiece. Lettie pitched THE GLASS ROOM to a Portuguese publisher she met at the London Book Fair, immediately submitted the manuscript to him after the fair, and this week convinced him to increase his opening offer to a pre-empt. I was completely swept away from the first page to the very end, and even after finishing it a month ago I’m still dreaming of the characters and the stunning house based on the Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic that was built in 1930 by the German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Simon Mawer makes you feel like you have been with them, witnessing everything that happens in the light-filled room, even after the Jewish family who first lives in it has to flee. The UK publisher, Little, Brown, who will publish as a lead novel in January 2009 is not exaggerating in their blurb that says “Meticulously researched and imaginatively conceived, Simon Mawer’s virtuoso novel THE GLASS ROOM is resounding evidence of an author working at the very peak of his powers.” The Portuguese publisher is Civilizacao and if you have not yet read THE GLASS ROOM yourself then I hope this will convince you to put it on top of your manuscript pile before we accept any more pre-empts!

Dutch publishers are loving THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES by Adam Foulds!
A first Dutch offer from an editor whose taste I’ve always respected was made this week for Adam Foulds’ award-winning debut novel, and it looks like at least one other similarly selective publisher will be offering next week. I’ve set a deadline for best offers by Tuesday, May 6th. THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES has reminded me never to give up hope for a truly special novel even if it initially gets overlooked. It was barely noticed over a year ago when first submitted as an unedited manuscript and hardly received any reviews when Weidenfeld and Nicholson first published last summer (the few reviews it did get were very positive), but now that Adam Foulds has won The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award (see my previous posting below), publishers across Europe are keen to read this heartwarming, funny, yet completely unsentimental and unusual story. THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES is also long-listed for The Desmond Elliott Prize and I think it’s very likely to make the shortlist announced on May 22nd. A fantastic, two-page interview with Adam Foulds was in The Sunday Times last weekend . I’m hungry to read everything Adam Foulds ever writes after loving THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES when I read it last year and now being stunned by the intensity of Adam’s poem, “The Broken Word”, that Robin Robertson/Jonathan Cape just published to astonishing acclaim (Random House controls rights to “The Broken Word”). My previous posting below did not include this Sunday Times review : “An exhilarating tour de force. Its 33-year-old author moves around territory that is half a century and thousands of miles away from him with uncanny accomplishment. Place and period are conjured up as confidently as if he had been there…What Foulds brings to the portrayal of violence and terror is the elegance of accuracy combined with emotional power and imaginative finesse. It makes his book - concise and precise, attentive and inventive - a superlative achievement.” There was also a great recent Guardian review: “A moving and pitiless depiction of the world as it is rather than as we might like it to be, and the terrible things we do to defend our place in it.” It’s rare for a first book of poetry to have full reviews in the broadsheets and it’s even rarer for a previously unknown author to in one year have two such different books published by two major publishers. Meanwhile Adam Foulds’ primary agent, Anna Webber, just received the complete manuscript of his second novel which sounds even more ambitious and intriguing.  It is a historical novel set in the 1840s in an insane asylum where the poet John Clare was a patient.

Third Foreign Deal in Three Weeks for ONE MORNING LIKE A BIRD by Andrew Miller!
We just accepted a great offer (via Pikarski Agency) for Hebrew rights from the excellent publisher, Achuzat Bayit (who will also be publishing Adam Foulds in Israel). As posted below, I accepted offers right before the book fair from Salamandra/Spain and Hanser/Germany. ONE MORNING LIKE A BIRD is one of the most intimate and passionate, yet elegant and balanced novels I’ve ever read and it was one of the most requested manuscripts at The London Book Fair, especially of interest in Holland, France and Italy where I am opening up the submission beyond Andrew Miller’s previous houses. Sceptre will publish ONE MORNING LIKE A BIRD as a lead novel in September 2008 and it was great to have Andrew Miller’s editor, Carole Welch, sharing her passion for his writing with all the foreign editors she saw.

New deals for Fiona Neill, Toby Faber, and Paul McKenna!
The only offers I received at the London Book Fair itself were from the fantastic Brazilian publisher, Record: a pre-empt for THE SECRET LIFE OF A SLUMMY MUMMY (the sixteenth language deal for Fiona Neill’s bestselling debut); a first translation offer for FABERGE’S EGGS by Toby Faber; and a strong offer for I CAN MAKE YOU RICH by Paul McKenna. These were the first offers presented by Tassy Barham, who I started working with for Brazil right before the book fair and I have no doubt now that this was the right decision. Tassy reported strong Brazilian interest in fiction and non-fiction titles across our list. I wonder what offers she will send us next!

Since the book fair, I’ve also done new deals for Paul McKenna in Greece, Italy (I CAN MAKE YOU THIN was a bestseller last year for TEA/Mauri Spagnol), Arabic, and now for the first time ever in Sweden. Forum will publish a Swedish edition of I CAN MAKE YOU THIN next year. I CAN MAKE YOU THIN is the longest-running non-fiction bestseller in the UK (over 900,000 copies sold) and has the highest success rate of any diet book in the world (an over 70% proven success rate). Paul McKenna recently launched his I CAN MAKE YOU THIN television show as a weekly series in the US on the cable channel TLC and it has the highest ever number of viewers for any show of that kind! To date Paul McKenna’s books are being published in 23 languages. Amazingly rights are still available for all of his books in Spain/Latin America and in Portugal. You can read more about Paul McKenna’s best-selling books here.

London Book Fair interest across the list!
Besides the above titles the most requested literary fiction that we are submitting now or very soon is:
POLLARD by Laura Beatty - to be published by Chatto in July as “an astonishing first novel which is tough, rough and beautiful” and with “prize-winning quality”
THE GATE OF AIR by James Buchan - the acclaimed author’s first novel in 10 years, a love story and ghost story, to be published in September by The MacLehose Press/Quercus

THE LUMINOUS LIFE OF LILLY APHRODITE by Beatrice Colin - to be published in August as a lead summer novel by Riverhead/US as “The Glimmer Palace”, John Murray/UK, Q/Querido/Netherlands, and Neri Pozza/Italy.  Great advance quotes are now coming in:
“Written with intelligence and shimmer, The Glimmer Palace transports the reader to Berlin in the first part of the twentieth century. Colin’s heroine, Lilly Aphrodite, is as rich, alive, and dangerous as the city she inhabits; and as the novel progresses, Berlin’s history becomes her own.”
—David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife

“There are few characters as beguiling as the incomparable Tiny Lil. And Colin tells her riveting story—and the enthralling story of pre-war Berlin—breathlessly and triumphantly.”
—Jennifer Gilmore, author of Golden Country

“As moving as it is smart, this tough-minded extravaganza had me from page one. The Glimmer Palace is a dazzling tale of survival in the urban wilderness.”
—Emma Donoghue, author of Slammerkin and Life Mask

THE WILDERNESS by Samantha Harvey - a moving, beautiful, and courageous debut novel about Alzheimer’s to be published in Spring 2009 by Jonathan Cape/UK, Nan A. Talese Books/USA, DVA/Germany, Ambo Anthos/Netherlands, and Keter/Israel. It was great to have Dan Franklin talking this up at the book fair.
UNTITLED by Claire Kilroy - a novel set in 1980s Dublin that dispels all illusions about what it means to be a writer while surprising the reader with a exhilarating and romantic ending, by the acclaimed Irish author of “Tenderwire”, to be published by Faber
A WINDING ROAD by Jonathan Tulloch - a novel about art, lust, war, obsession, and a lost Van Gogh masterpiece, to be published by Jonathan Cape

I was also pleased that literary editors from Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia are still seriously interested in PILCROW by Adam Mars-Jones. If you have any doubt about Adam Mars-Jones’ singular brilliance after reading about the fantastic first reviews in my posting below, then read James Wood’s review that just appeared in The London Review of Books! This trumps all previous reviews: “This constantly surprising book is nothing if not a calculated strike against the old novelistic tendency to connect moral and physical impotence… it is impressive, given the odds stacked against it, how lively most of the book is, and how funny, too. Mars-Jones is challenging us, rather as Harold Brodkey did in his enormous, microscopically narcissistic novel, The Runaway Soul, to keep up with the book’s massive deceleration… Pilcrow is not only a fat gauntlet thrown down measuredly at our hurrying feet, but a subtle send-up of various genres: the family memoir, full as a biscuit tin with old brand names and sweet lost objects; the gay coming-of-age novel and memoir; and the English boarding-school novel… Mars-Jones’s scrupulous, compound eye enables him to see a whole era… It is full of scintillating phrases and original observations…. Generally, Mars-Jones’s prose is exceptionally nimble, dry, humorously restrained… He can describe more or less anything and make it interesting…. Pilcrow is a peculiar, original, utterly idiosyncratic book. It is admirably courageous, both in what it heaps on us, and in what it holds back.” I’m keeping my fingers crossed that a few more of the most courageous foreign publishers will not hold back from offering for Adam Mars-Jones’ tour-de-force. One of the most special experiences of The London Book Fair, or any previous book fair, was having lunch with Adam Mars-Jones and his Italian publisher, Stile Libero/Einaudi. It as also great seeing his French publisher, Isabel Laffont/J.C. Lattes, at the fair and sharing our joy over this rare novel that will be remembered and cherished for years to come.

Most requested commercial fiction:
A SNOWBALL IN HELL by Christopher Brookmyre - a sensational new thriller featuring a charistmatic serial killer who targets B-list celebrities and his nemesis, a tough female cop who looks like Halle Berry and is secretly in love with a mysterious bank robber, to be published in August by Little, Brown/UK.
THE MINUTES OF THE LAZARUS CLUB by Tony Pollard - a thrilling debut novel of historical murder and intrigue in Victorian London to be published by Michael Joseph/UK and there’s now a Russian offer!

HIS OTHER LOVER by Lucy Dawson (bestselling debut women’s fiction published by Little, Brown/UK, and to be published by Avon/HarperCollins/US, Rowohlt/Germany, House of Books/Netherlands and we just accepted a Hungarian offer) - According to Booktrack, HIS OTHER LOVER has sold almost 35,000 copies in the UK alone (it peaked at 6,900 copies a week here, which is a massive achievement for first fiction) and has been reprinted four times since publication mid March. Lucy is about to deliver her second novel which will follow in May next year with very much the same look and feel.
You can read some truly outstanding customer reviews on Amazon here.
And Bookzone has clips of Lucy reading from and being interviewed about HIS OTHER LOVER here.
Little, Brown has a nice interview with Lucy here.

And most requested Non-fiction:
WHERE UNDERPANTS COME FROM by Joe Bennett - just now published by Simon and Schuster/UK and there’s a great first review in The Daily Mail: “There are many moments of humour, but this is a surprisingly thoughtful book… As an introduction to this vast, fastchanging and still frequently baffling country, it’s fascinating.”
THE IRANIAN REVOLUTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES by James Buchan - to be published in 2010 by John Murray/UK and The Free Press/US
WHY US?: HOW SCIENCE REDISCOVERED THE MYSTERY OF OURSELVES by James Le Fanu - a provocative and eloquent challenge to Dawkins and Darwin, to be published by HarperCollins/UK and Pantheon/US in February 2009.
THE USES AND ABUSES OF HISTORY by Margaret Macmillan - to be published by Profile/UK, Random House/US in 2009, and now published by Penguin/Canada
BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre - to be published by Fourth Estate/UK in August 2008
FRIENDS LIKE THESE by Danny Wallace - to be published by Ebury/UK in July and in 2009 by Little, Brown/US, and Forum/Sweden

You can read more about many of these titles in postings below and all of them on the full United Agents Rights lists available on the United Agents website here. I will never tire of book fairs or travel. I’m away next week to Italy for the Turin Fiera del Libro!

AFTER THE LONDON BOOK FAIR

Just a quick posting after a very busy London Book Fair - after meetings with publishers from all over Europe and a few from Japan, I have been following-up with each of them, which is like going through the book fair in slow motion all over again. Unlike previous book fairs, there were not just one or two “hottest” manuscripts that everyone wanted most, but this time there was serious interest in several titles across our fiction and non-fiction lists. I’ll write more of an update next week, after I’m back from a much-needed escape from London to Vienna.

NEW DEALS - APRIL 11, 2007

“FRIENDS LIKE THESE” SELLS IN THE US!

US rights to Danny Wallace’s heartwarming book, FRIENDS LIKE THESE, just sold to John Parsley at Little Brown (US). John said of Danny’s account of his quest track down his key childhood friends, “I’ve fallen for the book, which I can’t stop talking about and which I found funny, original, and compelling. The book has a profoundly resonant point: that in this fast-moving, career-oriented, upwardly-mobile world, we often feel a simple curiosity about what happened to people from our past. That, and with any luck we’re all turning or have turned 30, and that’s both hard and easy at once.” LB/US will publish next year and Ebury will bring out the UK edition this Summer. As I mentioned below in recent postings, Ruby Films/Miramax have already acquired the film rights and the first foreign deal is done in Sweden with Forum. I’m sure there will be more translation deals happening during the book fair!

First foreign deals for Andrew Miller’s mesmerizing new novel!
Spanish rights are now sold to Salamandra and German rights to Hanser for ONE MORNING LIKE A BIRD, the tale of a young Japanese man forced to make life-changing decisions in 1940-41 Tokyo. This passionate yet elegant novel by one of Britain’s most acclaimed authors, who has been called “one of our most skillful chroniclers of the human heart and mind” (Sunday Times), will be a lead title from Sceptre in September 2008. I was immediately transported from the first pages. It is a fascinating and authentic window into a precipitous moment of Japanese history. Yet it is rare that a historical novel flows with such grace and intimacy. Inspired by the years that Andrew Miller lived in Tokyo and also by Andrew’s own experience of unexpected fatherhood, and with haunting images of people clinging to beauty and safety as their precarious lives are infringed by war, ONE MORNING LIKE A BIRD is a love-affirming novel that transcends all boundaries of time and place. And Andrew Miller’s international reputation continues to grow. Today, out of the blue, I received a Russian offer for two of his previous novels, the Booker Prize short-listed OXYGEN and acclaimed THE OPTIMISTS.

UNITED AGENTS LONDON BOOK FAIR RIGHTS LISTS

Just in time for the London Book Fair, the first United Agents Adult Fiction and Non-fiction Rights Lists are now posted for viewing and/or downloading here from the United Agents website!  But keep checking this blog for breaking news since Lettie and I won’t be updating the Rights Lists until after the book fair, hopefully with new foreign deals for the wonderful books we’re presenting in meetings from tomorrow throughout next week!

ADAM FOULDS WINS SUNDAY TIMES YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD!

In my Feb/March posting below I mentioned that Adam Foulds’ wonderful debut novel THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Today we are thrilled that he has won! Authors first spotted by the judges have gone on to win or be shortlisted for a host of other prizes – the Man Booker (Zadie Smith, Caryl Phillips and Sarah Waters), the Wolfson (William Dalrymple), the Forward (Paul Farley), the TS Eliot (Simon Armitage). Meanwhile, I’ve also learned that THE TRUTH ABOUT THESE STRANGE TIMES has also been long-listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize, and as a result of all this extraordinary good news, Orion has brought forward the publication date of the paperback edition (jacket pictured left) from August to May 22nd! So far the only foreign rights sold are in Israel to Achuzat Bayit.

Simultaneously, Foulds’ epic poem THE BROKEN WORD about the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya is about to be published by Robin Robertson at Cape. It has already drawn praise from Adam Thirwell (“a major work”) and noted poets such as Michael Longley, Christopher Reid, Ruth Padel, Andrew Motion and 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.”) The Scotsman even went as far as calling Adam Foulds “disgustingly talented”!

FANTASTIC REVIEWS FOR new fiction by Adam Mars-Jones and David Szalay, and non-fiction by Toby Faber

Last Wednesday I ventured farther south of the river than I’ve ever been so far, to one of London’s most delightful independent bookshops, Dulwich Books, for the long-awaited launch of Adam Mars-Jones’ extraordinary novel, PILCROW. Lee Brackstone delivered a speech describing the mythical status surrounding the book over these past 14 years within Faber and Faber, and how in this current time of increasingly “mass-market” publishing it is a particularly rare and satisfying pleasure to publish a novel that can truly be described as “Dickensian, Proustian, and Shandean”. I personally cannot claim to have waited nearly as long as others who raised a glass of wine to Adam Mars-Jones. I only first heard about his mysterious tome when it was delivered last spring, but I’ll never forget the experience of devouring every page of it as I carried the manuscript on my travels during summer and fall from London to New York to London to Amsterdam to Frankfurt to Italy and finally back to London, never noticing the weight of all that paper or the page numbers since I was utterly intoxicated by the riotous humour and sublime beauty of Adam Mars-Jones’ prose. Nor will I ever forget the satisfaction of having four of the top publishers in Italy bid for the Italian rights and accepting the best offer from the prestigious Stile Libero imprint of Einaudi, and then having Isabelle Laffont of J.C. Lattes phone me to say how much she loved PILCROW and wanted to publish it in France.

It’s now wonderful to now see reviews trumpeting PILCROW’s singular delights:
The Observer: “With echoes of Joyce, Adam Mars-Jones’ Pilcrow offers a compulsive study of serious illness… an unexpected departure for one of the sharpest critical intelligences of our time.”
The TLS: “An impressive piece of work… But Pilcrow is, apart from all else, too subtle a book to be programmatic. It renders the interior voice of an exceptional being agilely and plausibly, and it does justice to a peculiar historical moment, both brutal and byzantine, bright with possibility yet thicketed with codes and conventions. It is also, in places, very funny.”

And especially glowing reviews in The New Statesman: “Keenly intelligent…a sophisticated, sensitive and - yes - linguistically fascinating book… Instead of writing a faster-paced book that would have done a disservice to the protagonist’s experiences, Mars-Jones deploys an intricately developed aesthetic range to invigorate his novel with the vitality it might otherwise lack. The novel’s enduring interest will perhaps be guaranteed by the teasing implications of this rich and ambitious weave of linguistic playfulness and structural nuances, which together compel the reader to focus closely on the novel’s language and typography (as you would expect in a book named after a typographical character)… In fact, Pilcrow is the first of a John Cromer trilogy, so at least some of these mysteries will be unravelled in the next instalment, which shall be eagerly awaited.”

and The Sunday Times: “Although often tender, Pilcrow is rigorously unsentimental, and there is an audacious and often extremely funny matter-of-factness about the way it describes the various incapacities of John and his fellows and how they manage them… Throughout the book there is a skilful use of double perspective, with John vibrantly present not only as the boy undergoing these experiences but also as the adult looking back on them. His narrative swoops effortlessly between playful elaboration and childlike simplicity…further instalments are apparently in progress. It may seem risky for a writer who has made his reputation with a series of impeccably svelte volumes to embark on a capacious Bildungsroman, but if the rest of John’s story is as beautifully written and as truly exhilarating as Pilcrow, most readers will be cheering him on.”

I’ve been told by Adam Mars-Jones and his agent, Pat Kavanagh, that a complete draft of the next instalment of John Cromer’s extraordinary life is already written so the wait this time won’t be as long! In addition to the above reviews, The Telegraph published a great interview with Adam Mars-Jones that you can read here.

Brilliant reviews in The Guardian and The Independent for David Szalay’s debut!

Following my posting last month of a great review in the FT, I’m thrilled to see David Szalay’s LONDON AND THE SOUTHEAST receiving even stronger praise from Stuart Evers in The Guardian:
“Grimly gripping…In a narrative cluttered with scenes of heartbreak, there exists one of the most moving and deftly written scenes I’ve read in some years.”
and in The Independent: “Startlingly good…a terrific debut, written in a present tense which flashes every so often into the past – a trick which Szalay pulls off with confidence…The tension is all in the central character, his highs and lows, his attempts to escape the numbness of indifference. He drowns; he surfaces; he gasps for air. It’s a tense and compelling read.” So far only Dutch rights are sold to Mouria. I’m sure there will be interest from many other countries during The London Book Fair, and David Szalay is in the midst of writing an intriguing second novel.

FABERGE’S EGGS by Toby Faber which Macmillan launched in London last week with a wonderful party at Pushkin House now has wonderful first reviews by Sam Leith in The Spectator: “What a great idea for a book, this is — and how well-executed. Toby Faber has produced, at just the length to suit it, a hugely enjoyable and informative account of the making and afterlife of the best-known examples of the jeweller’s art. Here is a series of love stories; a historical panorama; a tale of grotesque imperial frivolity, of barbarous totalitarian wrecking and of all-American hucksterism; a parable about the nature of value; and, above all, a portrait of the endless and winning absurdity of economic man in pursuit of shiny gewgaws.”

and Nigel Jones in The Daily Telegraph:
“Like the eggs themselves, Faber’s book has multiple layers with a social history of pre- and post-revolutionary Russia… As with every family story, this one has its fair share of secrets and scandals… Faber leaves us with the tantalising possibility that the ‘missing eggs’ - those known to have been made by Fabergé but which never re-emerged after the Revolution - may yet surface. Now that would be the biggest Easter egg hunt of all.”
I’ve just begun submitting FABERGE’S EGGS internationally to interested publishers. Random House will publish in the US in October 2008.

Nick Hornby’s SLAM is optioned by DNA!

Nick Hornby’s newest novel SLAM is now optioned by DNA films, the same people who made “28 Days Later” (one of my favourite recent films that almost scared me out of wanting to move to London, and now that I live here I can’t get up the courage to watch the sequel, not that flesh-eating zombies could be nearly as scary as the last months I spent in a nearly empty Drury House!) Nick Hornby who now has a great blog of his own, writes that he plans to adapt SLAM himself, something he hasn’t done since he wrote the UK version of “Fever Pitch” more than 10 years ago. Meanwhile, Nick Hornby recently wrote his first original screenplay for “An Education”, a film that is shooting now about a posh schoolgirl who grows up fast in 1960’s London, directed by Danish director, Lone Scherfig. SLAM, about a couple of teenagers who collide with adulthood when they suddenly find themselves becoming parents, was a New York Times bestseller in hardcover last year and Penguin has now published in paperback. Translation rights have sold in 26 languages, including Croatian, Finnish, Estonian, Slovenian, Korean, but not yet in Japanese. Three of Nick Hornby’s previous books: “Fever Pitch”, “High Fidelity” and “About A Boy” have all been made into successful, and much-loved, films. The filming of Nick Hornby’s most recent adult novel, “A Long Way Down”, is taking place now. It was first optioned in 2006 by Johnny Depp who is now a producer along with David Heyman/Heyday and the script has been written by D.V. DeVincentis who also wrote the screenplay for the film of “High Fidelity”. Warner Brothers will release “A Long Way Down” sometime in 2009.

New Foreign Rights Deals - April 4th, 2008

Last week I mentioned that Fiona Neill’s best-selling debut THE SECRET LIFE OF A SLUMMY MUMMY was still free in Spain, pues ya no mas! This week I accepted an enthusiastic world Spanish pre-empt from Ediciones B. How do you say “Slummy Mummy” in 14 different languages? It will be fun to find out! You can watch a great webcast interview with Fiona Neill for Bookzone on Sky/BordersTv by clicking here.

This week Lettie and I also accepted an Israeli offer from Keter (via the Pikarski Agency in Tel Aviv) for Samantha Harvey’s novel THE WILDERNESS (scroll down for more info in my first Feb/March posting). Jonathan Cape/UK, Nan Talese Books/US, DVA/Germany, and Ambo Anthos/The Netherlands will publish this beautiful, intelligent and courageous debut novel about Alzheimer’s as a lead title in 2009.

And Swedish rights to FRIENDS LIKE THESE are now sold to Forum! This is the first foreign deal for Danny Wallace’s hilarious yet heart-warming new book that reminds me how much fun there still is to be found in my thirties, and how much I’ll always cherish my first friendships. Ebury will publish FRIENDS LIKE THESE with a huge campaign in this summer.

John Boyne’s adventurous new adult novel, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY,is now sold in Serbia to Alnari (via Kamelia Emilova and Mira Droumeva of Nurnberg Sofia) and previously to Rizzoli/Italy, S. Fischer/Germany, Salamandra/Spain (who has sold over 670,000 copies of “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas”), and Arena/The Netherlands. Transworld/UK will publish MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY as a lead title in May 2008.