Behind the Spanish Barricades - already out in Spanish

Ediciones Península has already published its edition of John Langdon-Davies's 'Behind the Spanish Barricades'. 

See more info (here)

The Destitutes of Lodz, by Steve Sem-Sandberg, sold to Literatura Mondadori (Spanish rights)

Just at the final sprint for Frankfurt Book Fair, we are glad to annouce the sale of world Spanish rights of this novel by Swedish author Steve Sem-Sandberg to Literatura Mondadori (an imprint of Random House Mondadori). The deal has been made on behalf of Nordin Agency AB, Sweden.

Literatura Mondadori is the Spanish publisher of acclaimed authors such as:  Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, Gabriel García Márquez, JM Coetzee, Orham Pamuk, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers or Javier Cercas.

SalmaiaLit also handles Portuguese (Portugal & Brazil) and Catalan rights.

Below you have information about this novel, which we hope will become a success in every country where it will be published!

****

* The portrait of a controversial man that is being compared to J. Littell ‘Les Bienveillantes’

*Already sold to: Aschehoug (Norway), Gyldendal (Denmark), Ambo Anthos (Holland), Marsilio (Italy), Literatura Mondadori (Spanish), Kinnaret (Israel), Paseka (Chzeck Rep.), and offers not yet closed from other territories.

DE FATTIGA I LODZ (The Destitutes Of Lodz), by Steve Sem-Sandberg

Albert Bonniers Förlag, Sweden, 2009, 662 pp.

The Destitutes of Lodz is a novel about the Jewish ghetto that was established by the Nazis in the Polish city of Lodz. It is the story of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, the Nazi-appointed Jewish leader of this camp, and his ambiguous and shady role in the annihilation of the Polish Jews. 

In the summer of 1944, Himmler gives orders to “liquidate” the ghetto. As transportation to the Nazi death camps increases, so does the ghettos inhabitants’ knowledge of them. Slowly but surely the Lodz ghetto, with its 250.000 people, is emptied of all citizens and Rumkowski is finally forced to leave his safe haven. In August 1944, shortly after leaving the ghetto, he is killed in Auschwitz, alongside his entire family.

Sem-Sandberg’s novel describes the life in the sealed off town district. It speaks of the imposing German cadaver discipline, the gruesome slave labour, the starvation, and the futile escape attempts. Paradoxically, in the emergence of the collective and craftily subversive Ghetto Chronicles - the author’s main source for this novel - the reader is also shown the art of survival, and man’s remarkable will to live. 

In The Destitutes of Lodz, Steve Sem-Sandberg takes his reader on a powerfully moving journey into the cold realities of the Holocaust.

Choice of REVIEWS:

* This is real literature. A great work of fiction. Steve Sem-Sandberg steps forward as a worthy and completed successor to, shall we say, a PO Enquist – with whom he shares not only the ability to make poetry out of prose but also a fascination for treachery’s and betrayal’s lowest sediment. Per Svensson, Dagens Nyheter.

* Perhaps the very first holocaust account that dares to step away from the black and white perspective. In the hands of Sweden’s foremost European storyteller, the truth is not always what it seems. Daniel Sjölin, Babel

* Steve Sem-Sandberg’s latest novel “The Destitutes of Lodz” – massive in size but polished to a light conciseness in every last detail – is also a majestic portrayal where documented facts create the foundation for fictions insight into historical fate. Mikael van Ries, Svenska Dagbladet

About the author:

Steve Sem-Sandberg (b. 1958) is one of Sweden’s greatest literary talents. He divides his time between Vienna and Stockholm. This cosmopolitan author has been nominated for the August Prize, the Swedish Radio Literary Award and the prestigious Nordic Council Literary Award. In 2007 he was the first person to receive the esteemed Sorescu Award and was recently honoured with De Nios Grand Award, with the following motivation: "for an advanced literary craftsmanship, characterized by an intellectual mindset, a historical feeling of presence and insightful character portraits." 

His trilogy on the three most infamous women of the 20 th Century (Milena Jesenská, Ulrike Meinhof and Lou Andreas Salomé) won great acclaim in Scandinavia. Härifrån till allmänningen (From Here to the Great Commons), published in 2005 and set during the interesting period between 1965 and 1975, is a more commercial title that received outstanding reviews. With his latest novel De fattiga i Lodz (The Destitutes of Lodz), 2009, Steve Sem-Sandberg has been highly praised in the Swedish media. The novel took him five years to write during which he lived through a life threatening kidney disease and came through it looking at life in a whole new light. 

Bibliography:

De fattiga i Lodz / The Destitutes of Lodz, 2009 

Härifrån till allmänningen / From Here to the Great Commons, 2005 

Ravensbrück / Ravensbrück, 2003 

Allt förgängligt är bara en bild / Only the Image Remains, 1999 

Theres / Theres, 1996

Patricia Rodriguez's Big South in Babelia

Babelia, the literary magazine of 'El País', has published today a beautiful article by Patricia Rodríguez (author of '19 pulgadas'). 

In the article she talks about a brief visit to Henry Miller's Big South and gives us a rather interesting view on tourism and on the experience of visiting places that mean something to us or to someone we admire(d).

Read it all (here). 

Einaudi/Stile Libero preempts 'El anticuario' in Italy

More good news about 'El anticuario' are reaching us these days. The prestigious Italian publishing house Einaudi has just acquired translation rights of Julián Sánchez's novel. They will publish it in their Stile Libero Big series, where acclaimed authors such as Anne Holt, Fred Vargas, Giancarlo de Cataldo, David Foster Wallace or Jason Goodwin also publish their novels.

We would like to post again the positive review about 'El Anticuario' from Library Journal (US). Below please see it.

Up to now, the foreign publishers of this novel will be: Limes Verlag/Random House (Germany), Querido (The Netherlands), Livanis (Greece) and now Einaudi/Stile Libero (Italy)

****************

El Anticuario (The Antique Dealer) - Starred review

Sánchez, Julián

Roca Editorial

Sánchez prefaces this compelling novel with the assertion that some of the events described are real, which, combined with Sánchez’s fine writing, lends this book a delicious plausibility.

Antiquarian Artur Aiguader’s confidential connections enable him to corner the market on superb acquisitions in Barcelona, but now is the time of reckoning. Artur is murdered, but shortly beforehand he had sent a letter to his adopted son, the acclaimed writer Enrique Alonso, directing him to a certain book in the event of his death. 

Determined to find both the murderer and the secret of the book for which Artur gave his life, Enrique soon finds himself caught up in a race to solve a perilous historical mystery before other forces do.

This latest addition to the Da Vinci Code readalikes is in many ways superior to it. While the ambit here is literary rather than artistic, the theology is far less controversial (kabbalistic rather than Gnostic), and the hint of magic is a delight. 

Sánchez respects the reader’s intelligence, reveals the necessary bits and plot twists at precisely the right intervals, and maintains perfect pace with multidimensional characters, which he wisely limits in number. Highly recommended for general interest bookstores and public libraries.—Carolyn Kost, Stevenson Sch. Lib., Pebble Beach, CA

****

Julián Sánchez was born in Barcelona in 1966 and lives in San Sebastián (Basque Country) since 1993. He’s been a basket ball referee in the Spanish professional league, a job that he combined with his passion towards books. 

El anticuario is his first published novel, and already a success!

A new country for 'El anticuario': Greece

It seems week after week more foreign publishers are becoming interested in publishing this novel by Julián Sánchez. A novel of mystery and intrigue set in nowadays Barcelona but that unveils a secret from 15th Century.

A few days ago we closed a deal for Greek rights with Livanis Publishing, a house that has published many other successful authors in Greece.

For more info about 'El anticuario' see some posts below, or click (here)

Rights have already been sold to: Blanvalet/Limes Verlag (Germany), Querido/Q (Netherlands) and now Livanis (Greece).

Ricardo Adolfo's new novel: soon out in Portugal

Depois de Morrer Aconteceram-me Muitas Coisas (Lots Happened to Me After I Died), by Ricardo Adolfo, has been selected as the first and leading title in Portuguese language to be published by Alfaguara Portugal/Editora Objectiva, the Portuguese trade division of Santillana Group (Spain) to be launched next September 16th 2009.

“From Amsterdam, where he lives, young Portuguese writer Ricardo Adolfo observes his country with fierce and slashing irony. Only from afar can you see this close. A writer that Portugal needs to discover.” José Eduardo Agualusa -Winner of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2007

“The new Portuguese literature has to go through here.” Valter Hugo Mãe - Winner of the José Saramago Literary Award 2007

***

A young couple and their son, recently arrived illegal immigrants in a big city, are left stranded halfway home when their tube train breaks down. It soon becomes clear they don’t know any alternative route home – and nor can they ask for help as they don’t speak a word of the local language.

Confused, they walk through streets carrying their son inside a newly bought suitcase that doubles as a pram. By turns they are chased by two frightened women in hijab, abandoned by a runaway bus driver, robbed by a gang of street kids, and finally end up stealing a spare sleeping bag from a homeless man. The family’s traditional Sunday outing around the shopping streets – streets littered with bankruptcies and boarded-up façades – becomes a 24-hour marathon of revelations and confrontations that could make the couple inseparable, or could tear them apart.

Narrated by the husband, a loner locked inside his own mind, who believes that to make a good decision he has to do just the opposite of what he thinks is right, the novel explores the internal fight of someone forced into seclusion because he is unable to communicate with the world around him.

Combining a fast-paced narrative, quirky dialogues and a strong visual sense with an unflinching social conscience, Lots Happened to Me After I Died exposes the struggle of ‘internal’ immigration – much more overwhelming than any physical displacement.

Ricardo Adolfo  is an Angolan-born Portuguese writer. Currently he is based between London and Amsterdam. In 2006 Dom Quixote published his debut novel Mizé. Mizé was very well received in Portugal and has subsequently been translated into Spanish (Suma) under the title of La peluquera de Lisboa, German (Berlin Verlag/Bloomsbury Berlin) and Dutch (Querido).  In 2007 he co-created the short film There’s Only One Sun with award-winning director Wong Kar-Wai.

Adolfo is currently working on a new novel and on “Stella” (the film adaptation of “Mizé”) to be directed by Margaret Williams and produced by MJW Productions.

Lots Happened to Me After I Died is Ricardo’s third book and continues to explore some of the author’s favourite themes, such as the mixture between the banal and the uncanny, and the peaks of tension in the ordinary and mundane.

His work has been praised for its “…maverick writing, sober and elevated, with an amazingly fine-tuned sense of oral syntax. The dialogue is perfect.  Nothing in literature is harder than ‘natural dialogue’…” Fernando Venâncio, writer and critic.

Praise for ‘Mizé’:

* The entire book is a fast-paced pleasure, silly, strange and with street-tough mean. Just take the scene where Palha drives around town desperately looking for a parking spot, the chaos and the traffic jams and the horns honking, the hectic pace and the sweat and the nerves fraying. The book is a party with popcorn and soda and blowing up paper bags on the balcony just to smash them with a big bang to scare the passers-by into hiding behind their briefcases. “Glanz und Elend”, Ingrid Mylo (Germany)

* Sublime reading pleasure; a Portuguese who writes books like Almodóvar makes movies! - “Neon” (Germany)

* A coherent, naturalistic novel about dreams and disillusionment has a slow start but picks up real speed and finally convinces. Anselm Brakhage (Germany)

* This is all very coherently told and enjoyable to read. The argot fits and the supporting characters are refreshingly real. The local coloring make the liveliness perfect – one can well imagine a Lisbon suburbs to be as portrayed. And the double standard of the porn movie consumers suddenly full of disgust at the participation of one of their wives in such a movie is very well crafted ... this is a great match! “Titel” (Germany)

* A debut full of sparkling dialogue and unexpected twists.” Standaart, (Belgium)

* With a sarcastic sense of humor, Mizé is a book you would like to read in one go.” Fok.nl, (The Netherlands)

Darling Jim to be published in Portugal

Darling Jim, by Christian Moerk, is a modern, gothic thriller with elements drawn from classic mythology. The novel will be published now in Portugal by Editorial Presença. Rights were negotiated by SalmaiaLit on behalf of Nordin Agency (Sweden).

You have more info about the novel in our previous post (here)

Up to now, rights have been sold in:

USA, Henry Holt (lead title, publication May 2009), Denmark, Politiken (lead title, already published in 2007), Germany, Piper (lead title, publication March 2009), Netherlands, De Geus, Sweden, Lind & Co (lead title, publication spring 2009), Italy, Marsilio, Russia, Mir Knigi, Spanish, Planeta, Croatia, Fraktura, Poland, Rzeczpospolita, Norway, Schibsted, Romania RAO, France, Éditions du Rocher and China, Sun Color.

Darling Jim is also on facebook! (here)

The Antique Dealer, now in Germany!

A few days after the news of the sale of El Anticuario in The Netherlands (to publishing house Q), we are happy to inform about a new sale of this fine crafted novel by Julián Sánchez: It will be published in Germany by Limes Verlag, an imprint of Random House.

El anticuario is a novel about a secret, a murder, a search, a love and an adventure all over the streets of a mysterious Barcelona. A story of intrigue, suspense and search of the truth.

When the antique dealer and ancient books seller Artur Aiguader is found dead in his shop in Barcelona, his step-son and writer Enrique Alonso flies to the city to take charge of Artur’s things. 

Only a few days before the crime, as if it were an omen, Artur wrote a letter to Enrique telling that if something happened to him, Enrique should look for a manuscript hidden among the volumes in his library, a text from the 15th C. written in Latin and yet to be translated. The manuscript seems to have been written by Casadevall, one of the architects of the Cathedral of Barcelona.

Now, Artur has been killed and Enrique, conscious that the police should be allowed to do its job, is the only one who knows about the connexion between this death and the old manuscript. He can’t help trying to find his father’s killer on his own, while at the same time uncover the secrets that the Casadevall manuscript seems to hide.

The investigation reveals that Artur wasn’t only a good, educated and caring father, but also someone who acted as an intermediary between rich collectors of antique art and art traffickers. Besides, the translation of the manuscript offers him a journey to a past time in which Christians, Jews and scholars of the Kabbalah were trying to find ‘The Stone of God’: a big emerald on which the true name of God would be engraved…

Magic? Superstition? Much more than that, it is all about a fight that is lasting more than 2.500 years: the quest for earthly and spiritual power. As the manuscript is being translated, everybody who has access to it feels taken by the evil of ambition: the ambition to discover, to possess. Is it possible that this stone is nowadays hidden somewhere in Barcelona? Enrique and the mysterious killer think so… who will be the first one to find out?

Playing with past an present, Julian Sánchez has written a fascinating novel of mystery and adventures in which the reader is literally swept away by the plot. The building of the Cathedral of Barcelona, a cold and ambitous killer, the kabbalistic tradition and the many secrets hidden in 15th C. Barcelona’s Jewish quarter will take the reader’s breath away to the very last page. 

Translation rights have already been sold to: The Netherlands (Q), Germany (Limes Verlag).

The Antique Dealer sold in Holland!

Just before leaving for our summer break, we are happy about the first international sale of 'El anticuario' (The Antique Dealer) by Julián Sánchez, which has just been pre-empted in The Netherlands by 'Uitgeverij Q' (an imprint of Querido).

'The Antique Dealer' is a novel of adventures, mystery and crimes first pubished in Spanish by Roca Editorial and set in nowadays and 15th century Barcelona. The first print run, 7.000 copies was sold out in only two months! Being a debut novel it is very good news.

A few weeks ago we received a very positive review about 'El Anticuario' from Library Journal (US). Below please see it:

****************

El Anticuario (The Antique Dealer) - Starred review
Sánchez, Julián
Roca Editorial

Sánchez prefaces this compelling novel with the assertion that some of the events described are real, which, combined with Sánchez’s fine writing, lends this book a delicious plausibility.

Antiquarian Artur Aiguader’s confidential connections enable him to corner the market on superb acquisitions in Barcelona, but now is the time of reckoning. Artur is murdered, but shortly beforehand he had sent a letter to his adopted son, the acclaimed writer Enrique Alonso, directing him to a certain book in the event of his death. 

Determined to find both the murderer and the secret of the book for which Artur gave his life, Enrique soon finds himself caught up in a race to solve a perilous historical mystery before other forces do.

This latest addition to the Da Vinci Code readalikes is in many ways superior to it. While the ambit here is literary rather than artistic, the theology is far less controversial (kabbalistic rather than Gnostic), and the hint of magic is a delight. 

Sánchez respects the reader’s intelligence, reveals the necessary bits and plot twists at precisely the right intervals, and maintains perfect pace with multidimensional characters, which he wisely limits in number. Highly recommended for general interest bookstores and public libraries.—Carolyn Kost, Stevenson Sch. Lib., Pebble Beach, CA

Good reading, good drinks and... good music!

This is Trago amargo's soundtrack... prepare your favourite cocktail, switch on your speakers, click (here) and enjoy!

Below you have a first taste... 

Trago amargo (Bitter Drink), by F.G. Haghenbeck, will be published in Spain on June 15. Rights have also been sold to Denoël (France). 

More info about the novel (here). 

And the beginning of the novel in Spanish (here).