Hungarian Director's Book Draws Heat at LIBF
Fever at Dawn by Péter Gárdos, the Hungarian film and theater director, has emerged as one of the most sought after books of the just-wrapped London Book Fair. The novel has sold in nine territories thus far; Text, in Australia, acquired world English rights. As of press time, auctions were also currently underway in a number of major markets, including France, Germany, Spain and Brazil. Hungarian house Libri Publishing controls all rights. A Hungarian film based on the novel is already in the works, and it's scheduled to be released this year, at one of the major film festivals. Fever at Dawn is a fictionalized account of the true story of how Gárdos's parents, Lili and Miklos, met in 1945. At the time, he was in a refugee camp in Sweden, and was ill. Presuming he had only months to live, Miklos wrote letters to the 117 Hungarian women who were also in local refugee camps, in the hopes that one of them would become his wife. Lili, in another camp miles away, responded to the letter; months later the pair found a way to meet.
Grove Pre-empts Swedish Novel
A novel Grove preempted world English rights to just before the London Book Fair, Karolina Ramqvist's The White City, has been piquing interest around the world. Deals for the book have now closed in, among other places, Spain, Norway, and Denmark. Astri von Arbin Ahlander, of Sweden's Ahlander Agency, is handling rights. Originally published in Sweden by Norstedts, the book is about Karin, the ex-girlfriend of a gangster. When he leaves her, she begins taking care of his daughter, who she vowed to protect from his lifestyle. As she adjusts to her new role, she tries to keep the authorities from seizing her home. Ramqvist has written four novels, to date.
Norwegian Series Goes Global
Those Who Follow, the first book in a trilogy by Norwegian author Ingar Johnsrud, has emerged as another hot title of the London Book Fair season. The series has been selling in three-book deals throughout the globe, with deals having now closed in Sweden, Germany, France, Italy, and 12 other territories. Sweden's Salomonsson Agency controls all rights, and confirmed that a number of offers have come in from additional territories. Interestingly, Johnsrud is the first Norwegian author that the agency has take on since Jo Nesbo, in 2005. Those Who Follow begins with a case involving the kidnapping of the daughter of a right-wing politician, and evolves into a story about the hunt for a killer. As the Salomonsson Agency elaborated in its catalog, the novel is "a drama involving the members of a doomsday cult, and monstrous experiments in racial purity dating all the way back to World War II."
Australian Debut Hits the States
Australia's Scribe Publications, which is publishing Fever of Animals by Miles Allinson, thinks it may have an international hit on its hands. The novel won the Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award in May 2014; a previous winner of the honor includes Graeme Simsion's bestseller, The Rosie Project. Scribe controls all rights, and Catherine Drayton of Inkwell Management is currently submitting the book in the U.S. Scribe will publish in Australia in September, and in the U.K. in April 2016. The novel is about a man who contemplates his life through two journeys he's taken: one in which his relationship fell apart, and another in which he searches for a Romanian painter who disappeared in the 1960s.
ISIS Slave Memoir Sells in Germany
Lubbe, in Germany, has acquired rights to I Was A Teen ISIS Sex Slave and Escaped: My Story. The memoir is by Fireda Abbas, writing with Andrea Claudie Hoffmann, and chronicles the horrors Abbas faced after her village was attacked by the Islamic extremist group when she was 17. The Barbara J. Zitwer Agency, in association with Christine Proske and Lubbe, is handling rights. Abbas was recently interviewed in an NBC News segment.
