News and opinion on the changing world of book publishing
What Jostein Gaarder did for philosophy, Tefkros Michailidis seems to be doing for mathematics, bringing the history of math to the mainstream in novel form. A high school teacher by trade, a translator of math-inspired fiction and non-fiction by night, and now a debut novelist, Michailidis, with Pythagorean Crimes (POLIS), continues a trend in Greece [...]
{ 0 comments }
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 [...]
{ 0 comments }
November 2005
Corpse Bride (and Groom), Travels With Democracy From Boxing to Bassoons While many eyes in Hall 8 at the Frankfurt Book Fair were ogling Google, international publishers were juggling a flurry of deals on the heels of a rather upbeat year for most. Here is a sampling of some of the most prominent and promising [...]
{ 0 comments }
February 2005
Curvings of a Self-Help Author,Imaginary Friends in France Rated-R in Taiwan Eva Agull ó has become famous after writing a successful book about addiction in Luc ía Etxebarria’s new novel A Miracle in Balance, which has charged to number 4 on the list in Spain. However, in Rush Limbaugh-like fashion, she herself has become a [...]
{ 0 comments }
January 2004
The conventional press rarely covers them, but these days the action is with the literary agencies more than publishers. And oh, the changes we’ll see. Small shops will partner up in all kinds of unexpected combinations, creating a whole new landscape of mid-sized agencies. More British shops will follow the lead of PFD in planting [...]
{ 0 comments }
August 2002
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”), [...]
{ 0 comments }
February 2002
The Darnedest Things Swedish Kid-Savants, Greece’s Sippable Fiction, And Pilch Toasts All of Holland A wave of mourning sweeps over Sweden this month with the passing of Astrid Lindgren, mother of Pippi Longstocking, though her spirit lives on in the mischievous Swedish bestseller of the moment, Old Ladies Don’t Lay Eggs. This zinger of a [...]
{ 0 comments }
June 2001
Barbarians at the Gate French Success for Harnum, Boo-Hoo from Sweden, and Mortier Back on Tap in Holland With international lists seemingly locked in place, we cast a glance at a couple of interesting, if less remunerative, deals this month. First off, US agent Rosalie Siegel reports that she has started selling to so-called regional [...]
{ 0 comments }
November 2000
Beat the Devil Coelho Back in Brazil, Mortier in the Netherlands, And Pleijel Shakes Up Sweden Brazilian high priest of letters Paulo Coelho has conjured up The Devil and Miss Prym after two years of soul searching, and the result is a half-million-copy catechism that’s been deemed a “parable in which the characters show all [...]
{ 0 comments }
