Fall 08 LESTER LITERARY AGENCY & ASSOCIATES FICTION SPRING 2020 Eastern Europe Central Europe Baltic countries CONTENTS RECENT SUCCESSES .......................................................................................................................... 3 HIGHLIGHTS ................................................................................................................................... 10 UP-MARKET ................................................................................................................................... 14 CONTEMPORARY ........................................................................................................................... 17 COMMERCIAL ................................................................................................................................ 19 BIO & HISTORICAL .......................................................................................................................... 27 THRILLER ........................................................................................................................................ 29 CRIME / NOIR ................................................................................................................................ 35 (RE)DISCOVERED WRITERS ............................................................................................................. 36 TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH ........................................................................................................... 37 RECENT SUCCESSES Jean-Paul Dubois Luc Lang TOUS LES HOMMES N'HABITENT PAS LE LA TENTATION MONDE DE LA MÊME FAÇON (The Temptation) (All Men Live in This World Differently) Stock, September 2019, 360 pages L'Olivier, August 2019, 252 pages à English sample chapter available. à Rights sold in 23 languages: English (MacLehose Press), German (DTV), Spanish (AdN Alianza), Dutch (De à Rights sold in : Romania (Minerva). Under offer in Italy Arbeiderpers), Italian (Ponte Alle Grazie), Greec and Israel. (Doma Books), Russian (Eksmo), Lituanian (Baltos à Awarded the Prix Médicis 2019. Lankos), Hebrew (Hakibbutz Hameuchad - Sifriat Paolim), Catalan (Edicions62), Romanian (Litera), à 37,000 copies sold. Bulgarian (Lege Artis), South Korea (Changbi), China à A powerful, disturbing masculine novel about family, (Horizon Books), Vietnam (Nah Nam), Czech Republic (Euromedia/Odeon), Slovenia (Mladinska Knjiga), transmission, death, evil and the collapse of values. Croatia (Fraktura), Serbia (Akademska Knjiga), Japan, A family’s story of violence; part thriller, part exploration of Denmark, Brazil. the origins of evil. à Awarded the Prix Goncourt 2019. François - a sporty fifty-something orthopaedic surgeon from à 558 774 copies sold. Lyon - loves game hunting. He loves the fear of his prey, the Dubois describes human relationships with concision, danger and the defilement of it; and, though he wouldn’t humor and sadness, painting the portrait of a society admit it, he may also love the power of killing. When he is where an accused murderer awaiting trial is capable of about to kill a magnificent stag, François hesitates and injures the animal in the leg. Instead of despatching it, he sedates it, showing more humanity than a cost-cutting condominium hauls it into his pick-up and puts it back together, as he would administration. a patient. When his two children bring danger into the household, which François will take the upper hand: the Paul Hansen has been in jail for two years in a province of surgeon or the hunter? Montréal where he shares his cell with Horton, a Hell’s angel incarcerated for murder. Son of a Danish pastor and of a ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Luc Lang has written a dozen books beautiful French woman who runs a cinema in Toulouse, Paul including MILLE SIX CENTS VENTRES (winner of the Prix Goncourt was already living in Canada when the dramatic incident des lycéens), La Fin des paysages, Mother andAU happened. At the time, Hansen was a superintendent at the COMMENCEMENT DU SEPTIÈME JOUR (2016), 50,000 copies Excelsior where beyound his responsibilities he helped lost sold. souls and consolated the afflicted. When he is off duty he spends his time with Winona, his companion. This half Indian “A penetrating portrait of a wounded modern man.” Le Point woman pilote takes him into the sky and above the clouds. When a new manager arrives at the Excelsior, Paul’s life is “A perfectly mastered structure.” Les Inrocks thoroughly changed, conflicts ensue and the inevitable happens. A silted church in the dunes of a beach, an asbestos “Like an ingenious puzzle, this book is a theater where the mine under an open sky, the meanders of a silver river, the characters’ intimacy echoe the violence of the time.” Les Inrocks musical waves of an organ and the white trail of a plane compose the landscapes of this novel. The story of a lifetime, “A striking story about a man willing himself to take a second chance at life.” Transfuge this text is Jean-Paul Dubois’s best accomplishment. We discover an author who possesses a great sense of fraternity “The reader thought he followed the path of a melancholic novel, and who is inhabited by a feeling of rebellion against any kind only to find himself on the rugged slope of a crime novel, and finally of injustice. comes across the clearing of buried memories.” Marianne ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jean-Paul Dubois was born in 1950 in Toulouse. He was awarded the prix France Télévisions for KENNEDY ET MOI (Le Seuil, 1996), and the prix Femina as well as the prix du roman Fnac for UNE VIE FRANÇAISE (L’Olivier, 2004). His last novel, LA SUCCESSION (L’Olivier, 2016) was a great success, 120,000 copies were sold. Lester Literary Agency & Associates / Spring 2020 / Fiction / Central, Eastern Europe & Baltic countries 3 Louis-Philippe Dalembert Pascal Janovjak MUR MÉDITERRANÉE LE ZOO DE ROME (Mediterranian Wall) (Rome Zoo) Sabine Wespieser, August 2019, 320 pages Actes Sud, April 2019, 256 pages à Rights sold in: Germany (Nagel & Kimche), US à Rights sold in:: Italy (Casagrande), Germany (Lenos), (Schaffner Press), UK (Puschkin Press). World English (Blackinc à Was long-listed for the Prix Goncourt 2019. à A fascinating historical exploration of the Rome zoo, à The author draws in all subtlety the portrait of three packed with fun facts and anecdotes throughout history, female characters. Dalembert’s writing is sharp, wars, politics, fashion and ideas. generous and at times delightfully funny despite the à The author stages with a sweet irony and a real human tragedy he puts into light. tenderness, a gallery of characters all linked to the zoo à The characters manifest an incredible solidarity despite for the best and the worst. their very different backgrounds. Through a century of existence of the zoo of Rome, Pascal A grand novel about migration and exil that draws its Janovjak tells the evolution of our relationship with animals, inspiration from the real tragedy of a boat of migrants taking us into the alleys of a now controversial place, which saved by the Danish oil tanker Torm Lotte in 2014. remains a place of wonder for children, but disturbing for adults. On the Libyan coast, at Sabratha, the guards break in the warehouse where the women are crammed. Among the Inaugurated in 1911, the Rome zoo owes its architectural ones the supervisors molest, Chochana, a Nigerian girl and distinctiveness to the boldness of Hagenbeck. First and Semhar, from Egypt. That evening, after half an hour in the foremost a merchant, he supplied circuses and zoos with wild trolley of the pick-up truck charging at high speed with the animals. But Hagenbeck was also one of the first champions head-lights off they finally can smell the sea nearby. A little of training animals humanely and of zoos without cages. It was earlier, in Tripoli, a Syrian family, dressed in elegant clothes as from this perspective that he conceived of a new approach if they were leaving on a business trip, settle in the climatised to zoological parks in general and to the zoo of Rome in bus that has just stop in front of their hotel. This 16th of July particular. In this book, the reader is immersed in the history 2014, it is finally the great send-off. Dima, her husband and of this extraordinary garden which takes in the story of two young girls have left the country torn by war, in order to Raffaele de Vico, the architect who created an aviary bord a ship to Lampedusa. reminiscent of an observatory, a Swiss sculptor of genius who was half- mad, Mussolini and his pet lioness, the pope, and the ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in Port-au-Prince, Louis-Philippe writer Salman Rushdie, as well as a host of other characters. Dalembert has published news, poetry, essays and novels in both The reader is also introduced to a man and a woman who France and Haiti since 1993. The last work to date, AVANT QUE were destined to meet each other: Giovanna, who has been LES OMBRES S'EFFACENT (2017) won the prix Orange du Livre in charge of marketing at the zoo since 2010, and Chahine, an and the prix France Bleu/Page des libraries. architect who gives up his day job after being drawn by the strangeness of the buildings which connects with his own eventful past. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in 1975 in Basel of a French mother and a Slovakian father, Pascal Janovjak studied comparative literature and art history in Strasbourg and then departed to the Middle East, first to Jordan as a development aid volunteer and then to Lebanon, where he teaches literature at the University of Tripoli.