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Soho Press Rights List Phone: 212.260.1900 Email: [email protected] Foreign Rights Guide Soho Press Rights List Current and Forthcoming 2014—2015 Foreign Rights Soho Press, Inc. 853 Broadway New York, NY 10003 1 Soho Press Rights List Phone: 212.260.1900 Foreign Rights Guide Email: [email protected] SOHO LEAD TITLES F.H. Batacan F.H. Batacan was born in Manila and graduated from the University of the Philippines. She worked in the Philippine intelli- gence community before turning to broadcast journalism. Smaller and Smaller Circles, her debut novel, won the prestig- ious Palanca Award (which is known as the “Pulitzer of the Philippines”) as well as the Philippine National Book Award. Smaller and Smaller Circles This award-winning literary noir, hailed as the first Filipino crime novel, tells the heartbreaking story of two Catholic priests on the hunt for a serial killer in August the notorious dump city of northern Manila. 2015 In northeast Manila's Quezon City is a district called Payatas—a 50-acre dump known as “Smokey Mountain” that is home to thousands of people who live off of what they can scavenge there. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods in a city whose law en- World forcement is already stretched thin, devoid of forensic resources and rife with corrup- tion. So when the eviscerated bodies of 10-year-old boys begin to appear in the dump heaps, there is no one to seek justice on their behalf. In the rainy summer of 1997, two Jesuit priests take the matter of protecting their flock into their own hands. Father Gus Saenz has been a priest for three decades, but he is also a respected forensic anthropologist, one of the few in the Philippines, and has been tapped by the Director of the National Bureau of Investigations as a backup for police efforts. Together with his protege, Father Jerome Lucero, a psychologist, Saenz dedicated himself to tracking down the monster preying on these impoverished boys. Cited as the first Filipino crime novel, Smaller and Smaller Circles is a poetic master- piece of literary noir, a sensitive depiction of a time and place, and fascinating story Winner of the Palanca Prize about the Catholic Church and its place in its devotees' lives and communities. Winner of the Philippine National Book Award Winner of the Madrigal-Gonzalez Award Early Praise for Smaller and Smaller Circles “A dirty, gritty police procedural with a good-guy detective, who also happens to be a Jesuit priest and a forensic anthropologist . Satisfyingly paced, and crime-thriller gruesome.” —Time Out Beijing “A well-orchestrated, compact race against time . A ‘Smaller’ and smarter thriller.” —Philippine Daily Inquirer “Horrifying pleasure . The Payatas dumpsite is now given an even more menacing air as the setting for a series of gruesome murders.” —Review Circle 2 Soho Press Rights List Phone: 212.260.1900 Foreign Rights Guide Email: [email protected] Heda Margolius Kovaly Heda Margolius Kovaly was a Czech writer and translator. She was born in 1919 in Prague to Jewish parents. In 1944 she and her family were taken to Auschwitz, where her parents were immediately killed but which she managed to survive by getting selected for a work detail. After escaping from a transport to Bergen-Belsen, she was reunited with her husband, who had survived Dachau and become a devout Communist. In 1952, he would be tried for conspiracy and killed in a Czech jail. Kovaly's memoir of her time in Auschwitz and of the early years of Czechoslovak communism, Under a Cruel Star, was first pub- lished in 1973 and has since been published in many languages and many editions. Her crime novel, Innocence, is based in large part on her own experiences in early 1950s Prague. Kovaly died in 2010 at age 91. Innocence Translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker Renowned Holocaust memoirist Heda Margolius Kovaly's crime novel of 1950s com- munist Prague has been rediscovered and is finally available to the world, three decades June 2015 after it was published in the Czech Socialist Republic! In 1985, renowned Czech Holocaust memoirist, literary translator, and political exile Heda Margolius Kovaly turned her pen to fiction. Inspired by the stories of Raymond Chandler, Kovaly World knit her own terrifying experiences in early 1950s Socialist Prague--her husband's imprisonment and wrongful execution, her own persecution at his disgrace--into a gorgeous psychological thriller- cum-detective novel. Set in and around a cinema where a murder was recently committed, Innocence follows the unfolding of the investigation while telling the stories of the women who Heda Margolius Kovaly work there as ushers, each of whom is forced to support herself in difficult circumstances. As the novel brings this group alive, it tells their various life stories that have brought them to this job, the (cover coming soon!) secrets they share with one another, and the secrets they keep. When the detective trying to solve the first murder is found slain by the cinema, all of their secrets come out into the light. This smart, evocative, and deeply stirring literary crime novel is sure to be a translation phenome- non around the word. Praise for Under a Cruel Star “A tragic story told with aplomb, humor and tenderness . Highly recommended.” —Publishers Weekly “An exceptionally intimate and poignant memoir . Illuminating.” —Library Journal 3 Soho Press Rights List Phone: 212.260.1900 Foreign Rights Guide Email: [email protected] Okey Ndibe Okey Ndibe teaches African and African Diaspora literatures at Brown University. He earned MFA and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has taught at Connecticut College, Bard College, Trinity College, and the University of Lagos (as a Fulbright scholar). He is also the author of Arrows of Rain and has served on the editorial board of Hartford Courant, where his essays won national and state awards. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Sheri, and their three children. Foreign Gods, Inc. Foreign Gods, Inc., tells the story of Ike, a New York-based Nigerian cab driver who sets out to steal the statue of an ancient war deity from his home village and sell it to a New York gallery. Jan 2014 Ike's plan is fueled by desperation. Despite a degree in economics from a major American college, his strong accent has barred him from the corporate world. Forced to eke out a living as a cab driver, he is unable to manage the emotional and material needs of a temperamental World African American bride and a widowed mother demanding financial support. When he turns to gambling, his mounting losses compound his woes. And so he travels back to Nigeria to steal the statue, where he has to deal with old friends, family, and a mounting conflict between those in the village who worship the deity, and those who practice Christianity. A meditation on the dreams, promises and frustrations of the immigrant life in America; the nature and impact of religious conflicts; an examination of the ways in which modern culture creates or heightens infatuation with the “exotic,” including the desire to own strange objects and hanker after ineffable illusions; and an exploration of the shifting nature of memory, Foreign Gods is a brilliant work of fiction that illuminates our globally interconnected world like no other. “Razor-sharp . Ndibe invests his story with enough dark comedy to make Ngene an odorifer- ous presence in his own right, and certainly not the kind of polite exotic rarity that art collectors are used to . In Mr. Ndibe’s agile hands, he’s both a source of satire and an embodiment of pure terror.” —The New York Times Book Review “A story of sweeping cultural insight and absurd comedy . rendered with a stoic power that moves the reader more than histrionics possibly could.” —The Washington Post “Unforgettable . Ndibe seems to have a boundless ear for the lyrical turns of phrase of the working people of rural Nigeria . The wooden deity ‘has character, an audacious personality,’ says one non-African who sees it. So does Ndibe's novel, a page-turning allegory about the glob- alized world.” —Los Angeles Times “A morality tale for our time . With subtle hints at moral turmoil, a gift for dark humour, and characterisation that is perceptive and neatly observed, Ndibe manages to persuade the reader to root for Ike, even as his haphazard plans begin to unravel.” —The Guardian “This original [novel] is packed with darkly humorous reflections on Africa’s obsession with the West, and the West’s obsession with all things exotic.” —Daily Mail “We clearly have a fresh talent at work here. It is quite a while since I sensed creative promise on this level.” —Wole Soyinka, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature 4 Soho Press Rights List Phone: 212.260.1900 Email: [email protected] Foreign Rights Guide Frontlist and Forthcoming 5 Soho Press Rights List Phone: 212.260.1900 Foreign Rights Guide Email: [email protected] Cara Black Cara Black is the author of fourteen books in the bestselling Aimée Leduc series, all of which are available from Soho Crime. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and son and visits Paris frequently. Murder on the Champ de Mars Vol. 15 Paris, 1998: Now a mother, Aimée Leduc has her work cut out for her—running her business, Mar feeding her new bébé, fighting off sleep deprivation and pursuing a personal investigation 2015 with the local Romany (known locally as the “gypsy” population), who are forming ranks and mysteriously falling silent before her questions. A young Romany boy begs Aimée Leduc to take on a case from his ailing mother, promising World her answers to her father’s unsolved murder in a bomb explosion a decade ago.