Youths Kick-Start Japanese Market, China Makes the Grade, French Teacher Explores Afterlife When 19-year-old Hitomi Kanehara and 20-year-old Risa Wataya recently became the youngest authors ever to win the coveted Akutagawa Prize (which helped launch the careers of greats like Kenzaburo Oe and Ryu Murakami), the Japanese literary scene received just the spark it needed…Continue Reading
Frenzy in Finland Book Babes on the Baltic, Italy’s Newsstand Novellas, And Germany’s Aesopian Menagerie Having budged out of their Barcaloungers, reader-citizens are barging into bookshops all across Finland, where surveys reveal that the number of Finns who regularly read and buy books is climbing — 14% of those surveyed bought more than 10 books…Continue Reading
A Royal Pain Love Child in Denmark, Going Postal in Greece, and Sweden’s John le Carré Don’t look now, Fergie, but there’s a new royal nuisance in town: Behold the saucy, 18th-century Danish princess Louise Augusta, whose mug may not have been plastered on the cover of The Sun in her day, but who’s knocking…Continue Reading
It can’t have escaped any industry observer’s notice that literary agents are on the move. Bill Contardi’s out of William Morris and Karen Solem’s gone from Writers House, while the Loomis Agency’s Nicole Aragi has just set up her own shop. What’s up? PT queried those involved in the changes to tell us what they…Continue Reading
Bohemian Dreams Hitler the Artiste, Simon’s Parisian Sandstorm, And Germany Gets Its ‘Wenderoman’ The vagaries of history are the subject of a new novel by noted French playwright Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, who in On Behalf of Another sets his noggin on fire over this world-historical mindbender: What would have happened if Adolf Hitler had been accepted…Continue Reading
