Portuguese publisher Alexandre Vasconcelos e Sá is opening a new house in his native country called Divina Comédia (which translates, in English, to Divine Comedy). The news of the new company comes just after Vasconcelos e Sá made a noted deal at the Frankfurt Book Fair, pre-empting Portuguese rights to Sasha Grey's The Juliette Society, which Foundry Literary + Media's Peter McGuigan is selling in Germany (along with co-agent Marc Gerald at England's Agency Group).
The new house, Divina Comédia, is planned to release roughly 100 titles a year, both fiction and nonfiction, and over half of the output will be works in translation. Vasconcelos e Sá has published a number of noted translations in Portugal, including Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs and the French novel by Michel Houellebecq (which won the 2010 Prix Goncourt), The Map and the Territory.
