If your eyes are too tired to read this blog after too long in the bar of the Frankfurter Hof, you can listen to the latest audio update (aka podcast) from the fair.
Here are the highlights: Children’s books and new media. Discover Andy Brigg’s concept of how to use new media to encourage children to read books; Jens Redmer, Director Google Book Search EMEA, discusses computerized book searches; finally, there’s a first summary of the book fair.
Walk into almost any home in America or Europe and you’re likely to find dozens of books and many of them unread – their spines a new as the day they were printed. In Africa, where the cost of a book is prohibitive to many people, a book is held in higher regard. ‘The average book in Africa is read by 15 to 18 people,’ said Peter Ripken – the Book Fair’s Director for the Society for the Promotion of African, Asian and Latin American Literature, ‘The hunger to read is visible.’
Ripken was speaking as part of the Book Fair’s ‘Africa Day’ festivities during a discussion of the great art of African storytelling with Somali novelist Nurrudin Farah, the Cameroon writer Patrice Nganang, and the German actor Udo Samel, who was recently narrator for the audiobook version of the novel Die Nächte des groβen Jagers (The Night of the Great Hunter) written by the late Ivory Coast author Ahmadou Kourouma.
In Africa, the panelists explained, literature begins as oral storytelling.
Farah, who is best known for his ‘Blood in the Sun’ trilogy and is a regular at the Fair, admitted that as he wrote, he read out loud to himself to ‘hear the rhythms’ of his characters voices. ‘Voice is the easiest way for a novelist to differentiate one character from another.’ He added that in Somalia the dominant form of literature is alliterative poetry – poetry in which two or three consonants are repeated in the same line - and it has caused him to be especially sensitive to the sound of words.
Poetry also had a significant impact on Nganang, who told the audience that he began reading poetry on the radio in his early teens – an experience which inadvertently led to his first book. Nganang won the Prix Marguerite Yourcenar for francophone writers living in the USA, and the Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique noire for his second novel, Temps de Chien (Time of the Dog) – a book which is actually narrated by a dog. Speaking in French, he explained that his goal is Joycean in scope. ‘I am trying to reconstruct the ‘voice’ of the city of Yaoundé [the capital of Cameroon] through the voices there,’ he said, “be they dogs, plants, people or books.”
In the English language publishing world at least, those of us in the industry media have a habit of trying to encapsulate the whole fair into just one book. Of course, it is absurd to think of just one book being the Book of the Fair, given the sheer amount of business that is done at Frankfurt. Still, that doesn’t stop us!
For me, the Book of the Fair must not only be about a big cash deal, it must also have an element of surprise. It also needs to be a work that couldn’t have achieved so much so quickly without that essential Frankfurt mix of hype, passion, rumour and publishing vision.
If these are the criteria, a strong candidate would have to be a little work of fiction called Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife by American Sam Savage. First published last year by Coffee House Press in Minneapolis, the book had good notices but failed to break into the bestseller charts. Then it was read by Spanish publisher Elena Ramirez of Seix Barral (part of the Planeta group).
Ramirez was so impressed with this quirky tale of a literary rat who lives in a Boston bookshop digesting (literally and figuratively) the classics, she decided to take the unusual step of obtaining world rights to the book. Rave appraisals from writers such as Dom DeLillo and Donna Leon followed, and a 40,000-copy first print run in Spain was ordered just before Frankfurt.
Now the word is out. At the fair, Ramirez has sold rights to Orion in the UK, Einaudi in Italy, Columna in the Catalan language, Don Quixote in Portugal, as well as to Japan and Korea. In all, she’s received over 30 offers during the fair for a book no-one wanted just one year ago. That’s a great Frankfurt tail/tale.
If you haven’t seen the stunning black-and-white author portraits by Carolin Seeliger - the ones hangin in the International Centre in Hall 5.0 - then go there immediately. The extreme close-up focus on the eyes is mesmerizing.
After shooting the photo radio journalist Tobias Wenzel asked each author to ask themselves a questions they’ve always wanted an interviewer to ask – and then to answer it for themselves. Some of the questions are silly. Mystery novelist Donna Leon, for example, asked herself whether or not it is appropriate to put bananna and orange peels on a compost pile. William Boyd contemplates the effect his African youth has had on his writing. Zadie Smith wonders what three things her novels have in common (Answer: The endings all celebrate ambivalence.)
My personal favorite comes from the Icelandic writer Hallgrimur Helgason (pictured here), who asked, ‘Mr. Helgason, is there something that you want?’ His answer: ‘Yes, two more lives, please.’
While the big deals made by the major publishing companies may get all the headlines, Frankfurt offers signficant oportunities to smaller companies. A good example is Australia’s The Book Company. Twelve years ago, says sole director and publisher Glenn Johnstone (pictured left with his team), the children’s publisher wasn’t exporting at all, even though it had been in operation for a decade.
More than a decade of Frankfurt Book Fairs later, 85% of The Book Company’s income is derived from overseas sales, and it has sold books to 38 countries in 23 different languages.
This year has been ‘by far and away the best Frankfurt for us,’ Johnstone told me. ‘So much so that we’re looking to double the size of our stand from Bologna onwards.’ He says the books most in demand are educational books for six-to-nine-year-olds. ‘People are looking for a point of difference,’ he observed.
The US and UK are still strong markets for The Book Company, but China, Japan, Germany, Serbia and Hungary are now producing some of its biggest deals. Not that it’s all been plain sailing: ‘It takes a lot of fairs to build a client list.’
The winners of Germany’s leading prize for children’s books, the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, were announced last night in Frankfurt by the German Association of Youth Literature. They include two Germans, and Australian, a Flemish writer, a Norwegian and an American.
The category prizes, worth 8000 euros each (divided between author and illustrator where a translation is involved), were given as follows:
The awards were a great filip for Wir retten Leben sagt mein Vater, due to be made into a film called Supernova by Holland’s Revolver Films next year. Revolver Films owner Raymond van der Kaay told me that the tale of a family living in the middle of nowhere expectantly waiting for a car to run into their house was ’a very rich story that will appeal to a wide audience.’ He is hoping that the award will increase the likelihood of a co-production with a German film company.
In three years the German Book Prize has helped raise the visibility of German novels and reinforce the credibility of German publishers on the international market. On Monday, prior to the opening of the Fair, the €25,000 prize was awarded to 37 year-old East German writer Julia Franck for her novel Die Mittagsfrau – (which translates as Lady Midday). In all, 72 publishers from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland submitted 112 novels for consideration. Five runners-up received €2,500.
You can read about all of this year’s finalists, as well as excerpts of the books in English, here. You can also read an interview with Franck in English about her 2004 novel Campfire here.
Published by S. Fischer Verlag, Lady Midday tells the story of a woman who survives multiple tragedies during the two World Wars, leaving her emotionally crippled, and ultimately compelling her to abandon her son on a train platform. While not exactly life affirming, the jury called it ‘a novel for long discussions.’ It sounds to me like it echoes William Styron’s novel Sophie’s Choice.
Critical reaction has been positive, with only a few people demurring, including Gerrit Bartels who, writing in Der Tagesspiegel, called the choice a “classic jury decision” on a book that had the widest appeal. Prior to winning the award, the book was already popular – sitting at #17 on Der Spiegel’s bestseller list and should Bartels’ comment prove accurate, it will rise even higher.
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