Literary Agency - Ampi Margini and the Herder Prize for Literature in 2004. ... margini Literary...

Literary Agency

183 Brooke RoadLondon - E5 8ABUnited Kingdom

Corso Sidney Sonnino, 129Bari - 70121

Italy

[email protected]

- Spring 2015 Rights Guide -

183 Brooke Road | London E5 8AB | United Kingdom

Corso Sidney Sonnino 129 | Bari 70121 | Italy ((ampimargini))

The AmpiMargini literary agency was born in early 2012. It selects quirky, serious and entertaining world literature with the aim of facilitating cultural and commercial exchanges worldwide.



FICTION

1/1

ampimargini Literary Agency

Fatos Lubonja (Tirana, 1951) finished his physics studies in 1974. In the same year he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for “agitation and propaganda” after police found his writings, which contained criticisms of the dictator Hoxha. In 1979, while still incarcerated, he faced a second accusation, as a member of a “counterrevolutionary organisation” and was sentenced to a further 16 years. Following his release from prison in 1991, he became involved in human rights, as General Secretary of Albanian Helsinki Committee. In 1994 he founded the quarterly review Përpjekja (“Endeavour”), an endeavour to introduce a critical spirit into the Albanian culture (http://www.revistaperpjekja.org). As a writer he has published among other titles: Ploja e Mbrame (The Final Slaughter, 1994), Në Vitin e Shtatëmbëdhjetë (In the Seventeenth Year, 1994) translated into Italian, Ridënimi (The Second Sentence, 1996), a documentary novel describing his second trial, published in UK by I. B. Tauris in 2009. Among his many literary prizes, he received the Alberto Moravia Prize for International Literature in 2002 and the Herder Prize for Literature in 2004.

Nëntëdhjeteshtata (False Apocalypse)Tirana, 1997: after the world’s most isolated country emerged from a Stalinist dictatorship and opened to capitalism, many people fell prey to fraudsters who invited them to invest in so-called ‘pyramid schemes’. At the start of 1997, these pyramids crumbled one after another causing wide-spread demonstrations and protests. The conflict became increasingly violent, leading to the collapse of the state and of the country’s institutions. Prisons were opened, crowds stormed arms depots, and the country was abandoned to anarchy and gang rule.Lubonja has chosen to tell this incredible story through a narrative technique that operates on two levels: a third-person narrator, who describes the large-scale events that made international headlines, and the narrative of Fatos Qorri, the author’s alter ego, who describes his own dramatic experiences in a personal diary. The book begins with the synopsis of a novel entitled The Sugar Boat that Fatos Qorri intends to write about the spread of a small pyramid scheme luring people to invest supposedly in a sugar business. However, as the major pyramids collapse, real events overtake anything he has imagined and Fatos Qorri finds himself in the midst of a real-life tragedy.

260 pages - Rights Sold: English (Istros Books, 2014, UK) - Original Language: Albanian

A selection of authors from Europe


FICTION




My Name is Europe(Book excerpt available in English and Italian)

The nameless hero of the book returns to Albania in the year 2041. A relatively rich country now, part of the united states of Europe, filled with unauthorized buildings, luxurious cars, air pollution. A country that immigrants from Asia and Africa now regard as “the promised land”. Locked in a hotel room for three entire days, the hero reflects on his youth, his beginning in Greece, his love with Europe - a girl he met at the university- his first contact with the Greek reality. This fictional narrative is interweaved with true stories of immigrants, from and towards Greece. Writing about a language that is not his own the hero ends up talking about Athens, unknown Greek words, the Albanian language and sex cinemas in Omonia, the Balkans and Agia Sophia.

343 pages - Rights Sold: French (Intervalles) - Original Language: Greek (Livanis, 2011)

Gazmend Kapllani was born in Albania in 1967. In January 1991, he crossed the Greek border along with a convoy of people. In order to survive once he got to Greece, he worked in construction, restaurant kitchens and kiosks. Simultaneously, he attended the School of Philosophy at the University of Athens. He has been working as a journalist for the Greek daily TA NEA and Athens Voice. He was a 2012 Radcliffe Harvard Fellow, 2013 & 2014 IIE Fellow and Brown University Visiting Scholar. Kapllani currently teaches European History and Creative Writing at Emerson College in Boston. His works explore how totalitarianism, immigration, borders, and Balkan and European history have shaped private lives and narratives.

1/3

FICTION





Gazmend Kapllani

The Last PageSpring 1943. The city of Thessaloniki is under Nazi Occupation. Three members of a Greek Jewish family change their names and identities in order to escape prosecution and flee to neighbouring Albania. They will never be able to leave the country again: immediately after WWII, the Albanian rebels who seize power will seal the borders of the country for the next forty five years. In order to survive, the three Greek Jews will have to bury their past, re-change their names and redefine their identities.The family’s only son, Albert, will grow up to become Ali, the paradigm of the “good Albanian”, in a communist country where he will meet and marry the lovely Bora and work as the head of the Forbidden Books Section in the Tirana National Library.

262 pages - Rights Sold: French (Intervalles) - Original language: Greek (Livanis Publishing, 2013)

2/3

3/3

FICTION




A Short Border Handbook‘It is not a recognized mental illness like agoraphobia or depression... It’s largely a matter of luck whether one suffers from border syndrome: it depends where you were born. I was born in Albania.’

After spending his childhood and school years in Albania, imagining that the miniskirts and quiz shows of Italian state TV were the reality of life in the West, and fantasizing accordingly about living on the other side of the border, the death of Hoxha at last enables Gazmend Kapllani to make his escape. However, on arriving in the Promised Land, he finds neither lots of willing leggy lovelies nor a warm welcome from his long-lost Greek cousins. Instead, he gets banged up in a detention centre in a small border town. Both detached and involved, ironic and emotional, Kapllani interweaves the story of his experience with meditations upon ‘border syndrome’ - a mental state, as much as a geographical experience - to create a brilliantly observed, amusing and perceptive debut.

144 pages - Rights Sold: English (Portobello Books), Italy (Del Vecchio), France (Intervalles), Poland (Czarne), Danish (Pressto) - Original language: Greek (Livanis Publishing. 2009)

Gazmend Kapllani




FICTION

1/1



Perfect Place for Misery is the story of today’s vast European population living in big cities without any legal status: mostly illegal immigrants from other continents or Eastern Europe. Damir Karakas managed to portray Paris of today writing very lightly on a supremely heavy topic. The novel was also staged at the National Theatre in Rijeka in 2011. This is a novel about a different Paris, a novel about demystifying illusions.

280 Pages – Rights Sold: Germany (Dittrich Verlag), Czech Rep. (Doplnek), Egypt (Maktabet Dar El Kalema), Macedonia (Makedonska rec) - Original language: Croat (Samizdat B92, 2012)

Damir Karakas is one of the most important contemporary Croatian authors. He worked as a journalist and a war reporter from war fronts in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. In 2001 he moved to Bordeaux, and a year later to Paris, where he stayed for the next five years, making his living by playing the accordion. In 1999 Karakas published a book of travel prose Bosnians are good folks, followed by his first novel Kombetars (2000) and short stories collection Kino Lika (2001) which earned cult status on the Croatian literary scene. He further published a ‘docu-novel’ How I entered Europe, and two more short story collections Eskimos and Colonel Beethoven. In 2008 a movie based upon Kino Lika was directed by Dalibor Matanić, winning numerous awards in Croatia and abroad. Damir’s works have been translated into French, German, English, Czech, Macedonian, Slovenian.



FICTION

1/1


Farewell, Cowboy The novel follows Dada who returns to her home town, in Mediterranean Dalmatia, where her brother Danijel committed suicide four years earlier. Looking for clues to her brother death, taking care of her mother, Dada meets a series of colourful characters, falls in love and faces the harsh reality of a broken society.The author took inspiration from the Italian ‘spaghetti western’ movies, in which the protagonists are driven by money and self-interest, rather than moral values. The novel was warmly welcomed by critics and the public for the power and charm of its language.Adapted for the theatre, Farewell Cowboy depicts post war Croatia and its ‘lost generation’.

“Dada represents the generation which the war in ex-Yugoslavia has catapulted into a new future. A future, in which redskins were suddenly no longer cooler than the cowboys who had embodied the imperialist West.” - Die Zeit

“... a wild ride through the dusty streets of a coastal city in Dalmatia; clouds of memories are stirred up and verbal hot lead fills the air. The dust settles to reveal a subtle and cleverly crafted family story, which revolves around a pervasive past waiting to be addressed.” - Wortlandschaften

205 Pages – Rights Sold: USA (Mc Sweeney’s), Germany (Voland & Quist), Slovenia (Littera Picta), UK (Istros Books), Spain (Baile del Sol), Serbia (B92) – Original language: Croat (Algoritam, 2010)

Olja Savicevic is one of the best Croatian contemporary authors and a representative of the so called ‘lost generation’. Politically and socially engaged, Olja collaborates with theatres and is a frequent guest at literary festivals. Her work has been included in a number of Croatian anthologies and international selections, and her writing, books, poetry and essays have been translated into German, Czech, Italian, Spanish, Slovenian, French, English, Slovak, Macedonian, Polish, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Rumanian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Albanian and Zulu language. Her short stories collection To make a dog laugh won the prize for best author under thirty-five awarded jointly by Vijenac.




FICTION


1/1

Our Man in IraqAs Croatia lurches from socialism into globalized capitalism, Toni, a cocky journalist in Zagreb, struggles to balance his fragile career, pushy family, and hotheaded girlfriend. But in a moment of vulnerability he makes a mistake: volunteering his unhinged Arabic-speaking cousin Boris to report on the Iraq War. Boris begins filing Gonzo missives from the conflict zone and Toni decides it is better to secretly rewrite his cousin’s increasingly incoherent ramblings than face up to the truth. But when Boris goes missing, Toni’s own sense of reality - and reliability - begins to unravel.

“Robert Perisic is a light bright with intelligence and twinkling with irony, flashing us the news that postwar Croatia not only endures but matters.” - Jonathan Franzen

260 Pages - Rights Sold: Slovenia (Studentska zalozba), Serbia (Profil), Macedonia (Makedonska rec), Bulgaria (Damyan Yakov), Czech Republic (Art Libri), Italy (Zandonai), Austria (Leykam), UK (Istros Books), USA (Black Baloon), Sweden (Gavrilo), Turkey (Final Yayincilik Reclamcilik Sanayi Ticaret), Egypt (Ibn Roshd) - Original language: Croat (Profil, 2011)


Robert Perisic Croatian award-winning writer, freelance journalist and screenwriter. His books are considered authentic portrays of a society in transformation and of its (anti)heroes. Since the beginning of the 1990s he has written poetry, short stories and plays. Our Man in Iraq is his debut novel. It became a bestseller in Croatia and has acquired cult status, especially among younger audiences, in the countries in which it has been translated. Since 2011 he has been vice-president of the Croatian Writers Society.


FICTION




Lake Como“The idea of being able to work here seems totally unimaginable” is the first thing that comes to the mind of our hero when he enters the beautiful villa on Lake Como where he has been invited to spend a month as a resident artist, courtesy of the Rockefeller Foundation. With deep irony the hero takes us with him during his thirty days on lake Como, between walks, frequenting the local people, drinking a lot of wine and cognac. The environment of the villa is cold, aloof and conventional while he is interested in the real, humble and simple life. In the waiters found in the villa, the people of the village and especially in Alda , the bartender at the cafè The Spiritual, with whom he starts a tender love story made of drawings and smiles.

252 Pages - Rights Sold: Germany (Wieser Verlag), France (Actes Sud), Bulgaria (Ciela), Italy (Nikita), Spain (Sloper), Albania (Poeteka & Ideart), Slovenia (Cankarjeva Zalozba), Serbia (Geopoetika) - Original language: Croat

1/1

Srdjan Valjarevic probes into the heart of the crucial questions of his generation (exile, solitude and identity) with an economic narration. His other novels include People at the Table (Ljudi za stolom, 1994), Winter Diary (Zimski dnevnik, 1995), The Diary of Another Winter (Dnevnik druge zime, 2005). His volume of poetry Joe Frazier and 49 poems (Džo Frejzer i 49 pesama, 1992) has been reprinted several times and translated into English, French and Swedish.


FICTION



1/1

The Miracle of BreathingA young man seeks employment. Desperate, he visits the offices of a company he’s never heard of where he is offered a strange job: the only thing he has to do is to allow the company to use his house as a storage space, primarily for furniture. Over the next few days furniture is delivered, big and small items. Slowly though, as he makes plans for a brighter future, space starts to become a problem: there is so much furniture that it is difficult to move about in the house. By the end, he is confined to a tiny spot in the apartment, unable to move, buried under items of furniture and barely able to breathe. A surreal story with Kaska-esque references, depicting in asthmatic fashion our modern society’s absurd idea of happiness.

ATHENS PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2010

200 pages - Rights Sold: French (Intervalles), Turkish (Tudem), Italian (Del Vecchio), Serbian (Clio), Taiwan (Solo), Fyrom (Magor) - Original language: Greek (Livanis Publishing, 2011)


Dimitris Sotakis was born in Athens in 1973. He has published five novels and one collection of short stories. His novel Dissonance (2005) was translated and published in Dutch (VanGennup). The novel The Corn Man was nominated for the Readers’ Prize by the National Book Center in 2007 as well as for the “Diavazo” award. The Miracle of Breathing (2009) was nominated for the European Prize for Literature 2011.


FICTION



L’Inferriata (The Railing - Rizzoli, 1976)Diletta is a last year student at high school, strong and rebellious, she disputes the dynamics of a retrograde society in Sicily, embodied to perfection by her family. The love for a young man of a lower social class encourages her to rebel against a programmed life. When the family finally accepts the young boyfriend, Diletta realizes that Mario wastes no time in bowing to logic she has always fought and, scandalizing once again the whole family, decides to break the engagement. With realism filtered by extraordinary imaginative skills Laura Di Falco has been often compared to De Roberto and Pirandello.

272 pages – Rights Sold: Spain (Zig Zag, 1977) - Original language: Italian (VerbaVolant Edizioni, 2012)


1/3

Laura Di Falco became a successful writer with her first book, Fear of the day (Mondadori, 1954), which was a huge success with audiences and critics. Courted by major Italian publishers she also published with Rizzoli and Feltrinelli. She was a finalist of the prestigious Strega Prize in 1976 with The Railing, presented and supported by Nobel laureate Eugenio Montale. The Sicilian publisher VerbaVolant Edizioni is reissuing a number of her works.

The Expressive Powers of GOLIARDA SAPIENZA, the Societal Insights of LEONARDO SCIASCIA and

the Restless Psychological Investigation of LUIGI PIRANDELLO.

3/3

FICTION




Laura Di Falco

2/3

Tre Mogli (Three Wives - Rizzoli, 1967)Ferdinando Rivasecca is locked up in the seminary after a physical disability that affects his sexual activity. Instead of being discouraged he prepares to conquer the world by taking advantage of his condition. Around him and his emancipation, the role played by the historical period in which he lives: post-unification Sicily.Ferdinando works patiently to subvert social expectations: the impairment that so seemed to have damaged him ends him up with three women. Each, with different roles, will establish a series of difficult and ambiguous relationships. With a realism filtered by extraordinary imaginative skills Di Falco narrates of Diomira who just wants to scale the social ladder, Giulietta who is always looking for an impossible love, and Ofelia only interested in making money. Each of the four characters’ efforts will be useless for the changes caused by the war. And to come forward will be the new generation embodied by the young niece Sandra.

504 pages - Original language: Italian (VerbaVolant Edizioni, 2013)




3/3

FICTION




Una donna disponibile (An Available Woman, 1959)Elena is a woman of thirty-five, the wife of a prominent lawyer, bored and tired with a wrong marriage and the mundane routine of her life, but unable to break free from the conventions of bourgeois society.She meets Ennio, a young man in his twenties, and the two begin a sensual relationship. But in the end Elena is disappointed when she realizes that even this relationship does not add anything new to her life. It has, however, the merit of helping her to find herself.

“Una donna disponibile is a post-war psychological novel that comes alive through the detailed descriptions of its heroine restless state of mind. Undoubtedly, however, this is also a work that depicts an era, full of references, among others, to Sartre and Moravia. A novel about the stages in the life of a woman in search of herself, who is learning to define herself through the sum of her deliberate actions. It can therefore be considered as a great contribution to existentialist literature in Italy. “ - Thomas Stain

STREGA PRIZE FINALIST 1959

172 pages - Original language: Italian (VerbaVolant Edizioni, 2014)


Laura Di Falco




FICTION



La Festa è Finita (The Party is Over, 2014)La festa é finita is the opposite of a coming of age novel. Its main character is, at the end of his metaphysical peregrination, certainly none the wiser. He is, rather, still the quintessence of youth refusing to be absorbed into the adult world. Crossing many vices and few virtues, including drugs and disengagement, nightlife and partying, the terror of marginalization and of the grown-up world of work, what shines through is a humanity unable to accept normality but at the same time too embedded into that same society to be anything other than reactive. With his tone of amused superiority and cynicism, and a style stretched between reportage and narrative, Vendemiale’s bogus confession reveals a world, a generation and a city in which the ordinary and the exceptional are two side of the same coin.

160 pages - Original Language/Rights Sold: Italian (Caratteri Mobili, December 2014)Italian first serial rights: Lo Straniero (November 2014)

“The party is over, selfishness and the stupidity of the adults have played well the destructive and narcotic role they have chosen for themselves, handing young people a legacy of conformity and corruption. It is no coincidence that it is the young and not the old generation to attempt an indispensable “examination of conscience”, collective more than generational. Vendemiale is assisted in doing so by an eye that is able to see, by a mind that knows how to discern and reason, a language that knows how to choose and highlight, a humour that nails the context but also the illusions, the failures, the blind alleys in which he and his peers abide, screwed as they are from their fathers but also, very often, their confused accomplices.” - Goffredo Fofi

“A novel that finally tells without false modesty the restlessness and the failures of today’s youth.” - Davide Enia

“Eugenio Vendemiale is a thirty years old Walter Siti, more violent and dynamic, but not for this less elegant in his gait. A real thoroughbred, a natural writer. I have no other way to say it: our literature has a desperate need of his talent.” - Andrea Piva

Eugenio Vendemiale was born in Bari in 1983. In the last ten years he has convinced himself that the best way to live is managing to do absolutely nothing.Despite his resolution he has worked as an editor and graphic designer. He also found the time to open and close half a dozen blogs.


1/1


FICTION



La ciudad de los hoteles vacíos (The Town of Empty Hotels, 2014)Gonzalo Baeza’s collection of stories deals with the life of Latin American immigrants in the United States. Far from any stereotype or sentimentality, in these stories we find no magic realism or iconic figures, but anonymous foreigners who have entered the deeper tissue of an America where dreams are worn out and there is only survival. Mexicans, Chileans or Salvadorans who live in unglamorous towns and have even less attractive jobs, characters who adapt to the environment without banners of protest. They camp to get discounts on Black Friday, have false social security numbers, fail their mortgage repayments and lose their homes, work at Wal-Mart and travel on Greyhound buses. Instead of the great cities of the east coast or the sunny beaches of the Pacific, these tales traverse the small eternal plains of the Midwest, whose monotonous existence is only interrupted by electricity pylons. With a dry and direct writing style, Baeza gets to the point without for this losing to poignancy or variety, as varied are the many faces of marginality.

140 pages – Rights Sold: English (Sudaquía, USA) - Original language: Spanish (Narrativa Punto Aparte , Chile, 2014) “The stories of this book take place in an America of cities with shut down restaurants and bars where the white clientele has been replaced by the Latino immigrants. A country of dreams broken by the crisis, which paradoxically, leave space for new dreams of its new inhabitants. Gonzalo Baeza has captured as very few have the desolate and palpitating heart of the great nation that breathes near a Walmart and a Greyhound. His stories are compact and hit hard. They have pathos and poetry and they always know where they are going. La ciudad de los hotels vaciós is here to stay. There are many stories to recommend here, including the elegiac “Cascadia Palisades”, the mocking “Me dejó por Jesuscristo” and the intense “El jab de toda la noche”; all examples of the range of the expressive powers of this great storyteller.” – Edmundo Paz Soldán

Gonzalo Baeza was born in Houston, Texas, in 1974. He lived in Chile for several years, where he studied journalism; currently he resides in Virginia. He is one of the editors of the literary review Plots with Guns. This collection of stories is his first book.

A selection of authors from Latin America

1/1



FICTION

1/1



Un Año - a novel, 1935 – 81 pages - Rights sold: Brazil (Editora Rocco)Diez - short stories, 1937 – 189 pagesMiltín 1934 - a novel, 1935 – 240 pagesAyer - a novel, 1935 – 109 pages

http://www.memoriachilena.cl/602/w3-article-664.html#documentos

1/1

Juan Emar was the pen name of Álvaro Yáñez Bianchi (1893-1964). The son of an influential politician and diplomat, he lived intermittently between Santiago and Paris. In Paris, he was associated with the surrealist groups, and took the name Juan Emar because of its connection to the French phrase “J’en ai marre” (I’m fed up). Between 1935-1937 he published four books: Miltín, Un año, Ayer and Diez, which were largely ignored in Chile as he managed to upset the dominant literary circles of his time. As a result he refused to publish anything else but kept writing: Umbral is his more ambitious and impudent work, over 5,000 typewritten pages that comprise five linked works. In a break from realism, Emar’s prose adopts a fragmentary style and allegorical tone. Black humour, erotism and the subconscious are themes that pepper his works. In it we can observe links to the creationist ideas of Vicente Huidobro as well as the buds of cubism and European futurism. In the 1970s, and more recently, his work was reissued in Chile, and he is now thought of as one of the most important 20th century Chilean and South American fiction writers, and seen as a precursor to writers like Julio Cortázar and Juan Rulfo.


FICTION



Space InvadersSantiago in the ‘80s: a group of teenage classmates cannot forget a mysterious fellow student who has not been seen in class for a while. She was the daughter of a police detective who has been accused of committing several atrocities during the years of the dictatorship (inspired by the real story of a detective culpable of the beheadings of three communist militants). The voices of the students alternate each others in remembering her even in their dreams.In the context of the violent years of the Chilean dictatorship and in short hypnotic and rarefied chapters, Fernandez builds a story that sits between dream and reality and questions which is which. The space invaders are the aliens from the adult world advancing towards the children via the dissemination of death and destruction and forcing them to question the nature of experience.

88 pages – Original Language: Spanish (Alquimia, 2013)

Nona Fernández (Santiago, 1971) is an actress and writer. She has published three other novels and a short stories collection: El Cielo (Cuarto Propio,2000), Mapocho (Planeta, 2002), Av. 10 de Julio Huamachuco (Uqbar, 2007), Fuenzalida (Random House Mondadori, 2012). She was selected in 2011 as one of the ‘best kept secrets of Latin American literature’ by the Guadalajara book fair. Also active as a playwright and scriptwriter of very successful TV series.



FICTION



El museo itinerante de la señorita Schaff (Miss Schaff Travelling Museum, 2013)It all starts with a photo. It shows a rather colourful group of characters posing in front of the Versailles Palace. They have been summoned there to plan the search for the scattered remains of the fabled Amber Room. Located originally in Catherine Palace, near St Petersburg, the Amber Room was a lavishly decorated, baroque chamber that, dismantled piece by piece by the Nazis, became part of their war loot. Miss Schaff leads this group of eccentrics of various nationalities: chess players, art collectors, Latin-American drifters get together in this most absurd of ‘treasure hunts’. Built like a puzzle, chapter after chapter, the story of each of these characters is revealed as well as the random routes that brought them together. They will traverse a variety of real as well as imaginary countries and landscapes in the search for the world famous room.With a style that is part mockumentary, part detective account, Chaparro outlines the story of a handful of characters whose obsession directs them to inhabit a world of mystery, ambition, and the dream that the past can be reconstructed as it was.

228 pages – Original language: Spanish (El Peregrino Ediciones)


Hugo Chaparro Valderrama (Bogotá, 1961) is a writer and film critic. He has published the novels El capítulo de Fernelli (1992); Si los sueños me llevaran hacia ella (1999) No me olvides cuando mueras (2007); the short story collection El discreto encanto de los melancólicos (2011); and in non-fiction Lo nuevo es viejo y lo viejo es nuevo y todo el jazz de New Orleans es bueno (1992) among others. He is director of the Laboratorio Frankenstein.


FICTION



CIA Perú, 1985. Una novela de espias (CIA Peru, 1985. A Spy Novel)It’s 00:40 am on January 1, 1985. The spy Malko Linge arrives at Lima International Airport. He finds a country that celebrates the arrival of the New Year amid a fierce economic crisis and the relentless escalation of the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso. The CIA has entrusted Linge to protect the Pope during his visit to Peru, to encircle the terrorist leader Abimael Guzman and to prevent the victory of the left leaning party Izquierda Unida at the forthcoming presidential elections. To do this, the charismatic, dashing Linge can only count on the help of a young local diplomat who just started his career in the Foreign Ministry. Thus, together they embark, in the midst of a Peru marked by political violence, electoral intrigues and the songs of Las Chicas del Can, in the search of the enigmatic president Gonzalo. Fast paced and full of humour, CIA Perú, 1985 succeeds in the high task of mixing some of the classic motifs of the spy novel with historical figures and the Peruvian reality of the eighties, a period marked by huge political and social unrest. In a concise, playful work Neyra packs a confident, witty hero surrounded by

beautiful women and the tragic vision of a society under attack.

Winner of theIV PREMIO DE NOVELA BREVE 2012 OF THE PERUVIAN BOOK CHAMBER

102 pages – Original language: Spanish (Editorial Estruendomudo, 2012)

Alejandro Neyra (Lima, 1974) is a writer and diplomat. He is the author of the short stories Peruanos Ilustres (Solar, 2005), Peruvians do it better (Sarita Cartonera, 2007) and Peruanas Ilustres (Solar, 2009). Neyra has also published essays and articles on international relations and on literature. He is currently workig on a follow-up to CIA Peru, 1985.



FICTION



EscipiónThe protagonist of this novel by Pablo Casacuberta is not Scipio – the Roman general hero of the Carthage campaign and conqueror of Hannibal in AC 202 – but that ancient history is not entirely absent from its plot. Aníbal Brener, the son of a prestigious historian, a specialist on the History of the Roman Empire, has always had a troubled relationship with his father. An historian like him, Aníbal has gone from failure to failure until finally he is outdone by alcohol and abandon. Two years after the death of his father - whose funeral he missed - he receives news that the will leaves him with much of his father’s property, provided that certain conditions are met. Narrated by Aníbal, the novel is a gripping investigation of the tensions present in a father-son relationship where love and hate, authoritarianism and humiliation, envy and cruelty co-exist.As in Casacuberta’s previous novel (Aquí y ahora), this is a coming of age novel, even though its narrator is an adult, one who has refused, or has not managed, to grow up. His tale is one of discovery and of healing: the discovery of the father’s fragility and of his own identity, which can only as a reflection of the relation with the father.Escipión shows us an author in his full creative maturity. One that comfortably tackles a universal theme of strong classic resonances with elegance, irony and a kind of humour that elevates his sharp depiction of psychological dynamics.

304 pages – Original language: Spanish (Editorial Trilce, Montevideo, 2010) – Rights Sold: French (Metailíe), Croatian (Bozicevic), Spanish (451 Editores)

Pablo Casacuberta is a writer, visual artist and a movie director born in Montevideo in 1969. His books have been so far published widely in South America and his movies distributed in several countries. Selected for the Bogotá39 group – highlighting the best authors from Latin America under 40 – he has published seven works, the last three of which have recently been acquired for translation in French.


1/1


FICTION



El Hombre Que Despertaba (The Man Who Kept Waking Up, 2013)Just over the border from Uruguay is the popular, down-at-heel, barren beach resort of Hermenegildo. It is where the immense vastness of Brazil begins. In this “middle of nowhere place”, Ernesto Ramos arrives to give new impulse to his attempts to write a novel. There he will spend few days until his sudden disappearance over New Year’s Eve. Fernando De Armas, the ex-lover of Ramos’s wife, is sent to find out what happened.

Like its characters, El Hombre Que Despertaba operates in a border zone in which different literary traditions intersect. While apparently a thriller story - a puzzle to be solved, a seemingly seedy underworld and dubious characters - on the other hand, the novel is crossed by some classic tropes of the literature of the “fantastic”: flashes of parallel worlds, the theme of the double, the tension between reality and dream, the uncertain outline of past and present. This is a novel about the impossibility of writing a novel, where time, empty and suspended, gradually becomes dense and ominous. Iglesias holds with surprising ease this topic, builds his plot with the craft of a born narrator, and rapidly leads the reader to the conclusion.

184 pages - Original language: Spanish (Hum, 2013)

“There is something in this rainy seaside resort, these border people, in the impossible loves and the delicate melancholy of adulthood that is found only in true literature.” (Andrés Ricciardulli – El Observador)

“Clearly a reader of Borges and Cortázar, but surely of all literature of the double, Iglesias plants the idea that perhaps we also, simultaneously live the lives we could have lived.” (Fernando Barrios Bobbio - Relaciones)

“El hombre que despertaba is for me the best treatise on masculinity that I have read in recent times... on men’s ways of suffering and the often silent male sensibility. Congratulations.” (Psychologist Adriana Moreira Frechero)

Luis Fernando Iglesias (Montevideo, 1958) is a lawyer and the editor of the cultural supplement El Derecho Digital, he writes for El País Cultural and the weekly El Pueblo. Fiction works include Todas las cosas deben suceder (2012, All Things Must Happen), Historias infieles (2010, Unfaithful Stories) and Canciones de otoño (2005, Autumn Songs). Non-fiction includes Federico, the biography of Federico G. Vigil, co-authored with journalist Alejandra Volpi (2007).


1/1


FICTION



A Mirror Greens in SpringIt is 1984, and New Delhi is simmering with ethnic strife as anti-Sikh riots erupt after prime minister Indira Gandhi’s assassination. This cataclysmic event serves as the backdrop to the day-to-day life of an immigrant Bengali family. Chhobi, the elder, sensitive and intelligent, is forever trying to rein in beautiful, narcissistic Sonali. Ma, their mother, struggles with her loneliness after being widowed in her thirties; Dida is their feisty grandmother whose indomitable spirit prods the family on during times of adversity; and Dadu, their grandfather, is a man perpetually homesick for his estates, irretrievably lost as borders are redrawn to form Bangladesh. The story traces the gradual erosion of old values, an acceptance of new identities and, for the grandfather, at last a sense of realization that Delhi is home.

305 pages – Rights Sold: Italian (Neri Pozza), French (Wespieser Editeurs), Spanish (Siruela), German (Suhrkamp Verlag) - Original Language: English (India Ink)

Selina Sen was inspired to write this, her first novel, based on her mother’s reminiscences of her ancestral home lost upon Partition in present-day Bangladesh. Selina has contributed features and travel writing to most of India’s leading newspapers. She is at present working on her second novel, set in New Delhi and Kashmir.

A selection of authors from Asia

1/1



FICTION

1/1


URNABHIH A Mauryan Tale of Espionage, Adventure and SeductionLittered with virile, handsome and skilled warriors, the actual protagonist of this tale is that fabled figure, a ganika: a highly sophisticated courtesan of ancient times, fit to share the company of noblemen and kings, and their equal in refinement, intellectual training and political cunning.Misrakesi comes to the newly formed Mauryan court with a mission – to avenge the death of her sister. However, an encounter with Chanakya, the man she had planned to kill, sets her on an unexpected path... She lands the highly coveted job of a spy, masquerading as a dancing girl. In a kingdom fraught with intrigue, Misrakesi must always remain one-step ahead. With the help of her handsome but arrogant chief Pushyamitra, she must concoct the perfect blend of sweetness and seduction to vanquish the enemies of the state. But when she is sent to subtly conquer a powerful neighbouring kingdom, she might be in for more than what she bargained for... Will she succeed in her mission? Or more importantly, will she even survive to tell the tale?

Set in the 4th century BC and meticulously researched, this historical page-turner packs in romance, political intrigue, and mystery to make for a racy read.

368 pages – Original Language: English (India Ink)

Sumedha Verma Ojha was born on the shores of the River Ganges in modern Patna, ancient Pataliputra, which was the capital of the ancient Kingdom of the Mauryans, and has appropriately gone back to her roots for her first book. She graduated with honours in Economics from Delhi University’s and after a stint as a civil servant in the Government of India, she now lives on the shores of Lac Léman in Switzerland with her husband and two children pursuing her long cherished dream of writing to bring the beauty and nuances of ancient India before the world. Ancient Indian history and classical Sanskrit literature have been her lifelong passions. She is working on her second book on the Mauryans, researching a long-term project for a series of books on the kingdoms of Ancient India, and doing her best to learn French and Sanskrit!




FICTION

1/1


Twilight in JakartaHalf a century ago when Mochtar Lubis’ Twilight in Jakarta was secreted out of Indonesia and published in London, it was the first Indonesian novel ever to be published in English translation. The novel, a depiction of social and political events in the capital during the run up to a national election, contains a grim cast of characters: corrupt politicians, impotent intellectuals, unprincipled journalists, manipulative Leftists, and impetuous Muslims to name but a few. Although the novel represents a condemnation of political practices prevalent in Indonesia in the 1950s, readers today will find much in this novel that resonates still. It is re-published here at a time when, after three decades of authoritarianism and more than a decade of transition, Indonesia once again has a boisterous multi-party system of competing and collaborating political parties as well as a mass media which often both serves particular political interests and thrives on sensationalist stories of corruption and malfeasance.

English language translation: 2013

232 pages – Original language: Bahasa Indonesia - Rights Sold: German (Unionsverlag)

Mochtar Lubis (1922-2004) was an Indonesian journalist and novelist. His novel Senja di Jakarta (Twilight in Jakarta in English) was the first Indonesian novel to be translated into English. In 1949, Lubis cofounded Indonesia Raya, later serving as the daily’s chief editor. His work with Indonesia Raya led to him being imprisoned numerous times for his critical writing. Lubis was outspoken about the need for freedom of the press in Indonesia and gained a reputation as an honest, no-nonsense reporter. In 2000, he was named as one of the International Press Institute’s 50 World Press Freedom Heroes of the past 50 year. He is the author of six novels and two short stories collections.




FICTION



The Rape of SukreniViolence, money, and melodrama—these are the volatile ingredients of The Rape of Sukreni. Written in the 1930s by A.A. Panji Tisna, a prince of the Balinese state of Buleleng, the novel is the author’s best-known work and is still in print today.Sukreni is a modern Indonesian classic that draws on the melodramatic conventions of Balinese theater to present a powerful indictment of the commercialization of Balinese society. While on one level the novel appears to be concerned with the Balinese-Hindu notion of karma, its main thematic thrust is in fact the impact of modern commerce on Balinese society. In Balinese society an inhuman commercial ethic is turning people against all that is good and refined in themselves and their society.Even more telling today than it was when it was written, The Rape of Sukreni offers a unique and dark insider’s view of the island’s future that violently challenges the conventional image of Bali as a honeyed paradise filled with artists and happy tourists.


112 pages - Original language: Bahasa Indonesia

Anak Agung Pandji Tisna (11 February 1908 – 2 June 1978), was the 11th descendent of the Padji Sakti dynasty of Buleleng in the northern part of Bali, Indonesia. He had a varied career as a merchant, secretary to his father, Headmaster of a Elementary School, Editor of a magazine, and farmer, before succeeding to the throne on the death of his father. He is the author of four novels, all set in his native Bali.

1/1


FICTION



Sitti NurbayaFirst published in 1922, the novel Sitti Nurbaya: A Love Unrealized, by Marah Rusli, retains the poignancy that made it a modern Indonesian classic. In terms of its social impact in what was then the Dutch East Indies, Sitti Nurbaya may be compared to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the ante-bellum United States. Even to this day, the issues of injustice and indignities suffered by women that this novel raised continue to be debated throughout the country.Rich in description, dense with ironic foreboding and the inexorable workings of fate, Sitti Nurbaya is Samsu and Sitti Nurbaya’s ill-fated love story. But in their wishes, the reader might also also discern young people’s tantalizing dream of what the East Indies society might become, or could become, if only local genius, embodied in a modernizing youth emancipated from stifling traditions, could fuse with European genius in mutual respect and admiration. This too was, of course, a dream never to be realized, and one perhaps which never could have been realized.



Marah Roesli was born in Padang, West Sumatra on August 7, 1889. In the history of Indonesian literature, Marah Roesli is noted as the first author of a novel, and as the “Father of the Modern Indonesian Novel”. Before the first novels were written in Indonesia, the prose literature was more similar to folk stories. His works convey the need to move away from the strong traditional values, and embrace change and development.


1/1



FICTION

1/1


DroughtDrought is a joyous celebration of life and human commitment. Its hero is an ex-student, ex-soldier and ex-bandit, who decides to transmigrate to one of the outer islands of Indonesia in order to start life again as a farmer. He almost fails, but in so doing he is involved with a wonderful range of inspired madmen – bureaucrats, bandits, psychiatrists, religious teachers, and the beautiful woman known simply as the V.I.P. The outsiders humorously combine to question the normality of conventional society.Iwan Simatupang’s earlier novel, The Pilgrim, has been hailed as the first really modern Indonesian novel and the beginning of a completely new path in Indonesian writing. Drought shows Simatupang writing at the height of his powers and is a lyrical testimony to the strength – and the unpredictability – of the human character.



Iwan Simatupang was born in 1928 in North Sumatra and was an Indonesian novelist, poet and essayist. After involvement in the resistance against the colonial power, his arrest and release, he continued his studies in The Netherlands and France. He wrote his first novel, Ziarah (The Pilgrim) in a month in 1960; the novel was published in Indonesia in 1969, and was awarded the First ASEAN Literary Award for the Novel in Bangkok in 1977. He also wrote Merahnya Merah (Red in Red) which received the National Literary Award in 1970 and Kering (Drought) in 1972. According to Benedict Richard O’Gorman Anderson, Iwan Simatupang and Putu Wijaya were the two “genuinely distinguished fictionalists” produced by Indonesia since Independence and both had a strong attachment to “magical realism”.




FICTION



The Rose of CikembangFirst published in 1927 as Bunga Roos dari Tjikembang, Kwee Tek Hoay’s The Rose of Cikembang is an excellent example of the so-called peranakan literature of the Dutch East Indies that flourished between 1900 and the Japanese Occupation beginning in 1942.Highly sentimental in tone, the novel is rich in many of the controversial themes that Kwee was famous for: interracial love and the lives of its offspring, fate and karma, and mysticism and reincarnation. The Rose of Cikembang was reprinted twice and twice made into a movie. The film “The Rose of Cikembang” is noted as one of the East Indies’ first talking picture shows.



Kwee Tek Hoay (31 July 1886 – 4 July 1951) was an ethnic Chinese Malay-language writer of novels and drama, and a journalist. He was the author of several works, mostly inspired by real life incidents and political issues. He was honoured with the Bintang Budaya Parama Dharma award for contributing to the cultural heritage of the country in 2011.

1/1



FICTION

1/1


TelegramPutu Wijaya’s novel Telegram, published in 1973, has been heralded as a milestone in Indonesian fiction and as a trendsetter in its synthesis of reality and fantasy. Its first-person narrator is a Balinese journalist living in Jakarta with his adopted daughter. Early on he receives a telegram passing on word that his mother is seriously ill. But nothing is as it seems in Telegram. As readers are brought in to the stream of consciousness meanderings of this sympathetic yet troubled and thoroughly unreliable narrator, what is real and what is not becomes increasingly difficult to unravel.Telegram, Putu Wijaya’s first novel, provides worthy insight into the author’s avowed strategy of creating “mental terror” in his audience. Although unapologetically psychological and disorienting, the text also offers a compelling portrait of Jakarta in the early 1970s and reflections on a Bali that was already in the grips of significant social change, making it useful for students of Indonesian society.


120 pages – Original language: Bahasa Indonesia - Rights Sold: German (Angkor Verlag)

Putu Wijaya was born in Tabanan, Bali in 1944. He is considered by many to be one of Indonesia’s most prominent literary figures. His published works include more than thirty novels, forty dramas, a hundred short stories, and thousands of essays, articles, screenplays and television dramas. Since 1971 he has led the Teater Mandiri, widely regarded as Indonesia’s foremost theater collective. He has received fellowships to study kabuki in Japan, a residency at the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, and a Fulbright Scholarship to teach Indonesian theater at universities in the United States. His writing has been translated into Japanese, Arabic and Thai as well as English.




FICTION

1/1



Rawa: A Singapore aboriginal story (2013) Few people in Singapore today even know that theirs was once the home of several aboriginal tribes known as Orang Laut (sea nomads), whom the British labelled as pirates for political advantage, condemning them thus in history books thereafter. Rawa is the story of the Orang Seletar (aboriginal inhabitants of Singapore who lived in boats, and who Isa Kamari regards as the original Malays, going against the grain of current politics). Spanning three generations from 1950s to 1980s, it is a story of how the Orang Seletar became refugeees from their own land in the relentless pursuit of modernisation in Singapore in the sixties, and of how they were assimilated into the Malay community. It is also the story of the socio-political changes in the Singaporean Malay world during that period. This is the second book in the Singapore Trilogy by Isa Kamari.

176 pages – Original Language: Bahasa Malaysia. English translation: Silverfish Books

Isa Kamari graduated with B.Arch (Hons) from the National University of Singapore (1988), and M.Phil in Malay Letters from the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (2008). He has written eight novels in Malay language: Satu Bumi, Kiswah, Tawassul, Menara, Atas Nama Cinta, Memeluk Gerhana, Rawa and Duka Tuan Bertakhta. He has also published collections of poems, Sumur Usia and Munajat Sukma, a collection of short stories, Sketsa Minda and a collection of theatre scripts, Pintu. Isa was conferred the S.E.A. Write Award (2006), the Cultural Medallion, the highest Arts Awards in Singapore (2007), and the Anugerah Tun Seri Lanang, the highest Malay Literary Award in Singapore (2009).


FICTION



Tunnel VisionAyesha Siddiqui, 31 and independent, has just proposed to the man she loves. His silence makes her crash through the windshield of her car. In her comatose state, Ayesha floats between Time Past and Time Present. The narrative meanders through Ayesha’s life, throwing up startling facts about her immediate family, relatives and friends. It brings to the fore her anguish, her love-hate relationship with her mother and her failed relationships with men, as she struggles to survive and build a career and an identity in a male-dominated society. The story is set against the backdrop of Karachi - a city where the past, present and future battle it out on billboards, TV and the backs of rickshaws.

288 pages – Rights Sold: Italian (La Linea) - Original Language: English (India Ink, 2012)

Shandana Minhas writes regularly for local publications and websites and has written and produced short films and documentaries. Her novella Rafina is being adapted into an international feature film. Tunnel Vision is her first novel. Shandana lives in Karachi.


1/1




NON-FICTION

Warhol SpiritWho really was the American artist named Andy Warhol (1928-1987)? A prophet? An impostor? A monster? A moron? Truest artist of the twentieth century? Any inquiry about him proves perilous. And it is this danger (of ecstasy or denigration) that Cécile Guilbert has beautifully conjured here. For this book aims to reverse what has already been said or written about the famous painter-photographer-writer-model that was Andy Warhol. Neither biography nor academic text, this work seeks to illuminate all aspects of Warhol’s kaleidoscopic oeuvre. Each of the twenty chapters functions revisits Warhol opportunistic, cynical, superficial and global approach.

280 Pages – Rights Sold: South Korea (Nangman Books), Croatia (Sandorf). Original language: French (Éditions Grasset & Fasquelle, 2008)


1/1

Cécile Guilbert is an essayist, novelist and critic. She published with Editions Gallimard Saint-Simon ou l’encre de la subversion (L’Infini, 1994), Pour Guy Debord (L’Infini, 1996), Le Musée national (2000), and a fictional essay on the eccentric English writer Laurence Sterne: L’Ecrivain le plus libre (L’Infini, 2004).



1/1


Immigrants I.New York, Madrid, Bogotá, El Paso and Montreal.

Immigrants II.Barranquilla, Leipzig, Barcelona, London and Boston.

Immigrants III.Wroclaw, Buenos Aires, Havana, Lisbon and Moscow.

Immigrants IV.Paris, Ufá, Caracas, Mexico City, Cartagena.

(El Peregrino Ediciones)


NON-FICTION

ImmigrantsA five-book collection of non-fiction, a personal look at different cities from the perspective of a non-native: scientists, photographers, playwrights. What is the price of exile, voluntary or circumstantial? The five stories that make up each collection respond to these questions. They talk about small details and great events, where the body adjusts to a new latitude and the mind faces another language code. Like intimate travel diaries, these stories have the strength, the wit and the thrill of the best non-fiction literature.

((ampimargini))

183 Brooke RoadLondon - E5 8ABUnited Kingdom

Corso Sidney Sonnino, 129Bari - 70121

Italy

[email protected]

Literary Agency - Ampi Margini and the Herder Prize for Literature in 2004. ... margini Literary...

Documents

Transcript of Literary Agency - Ampi Margini and the Herder Prize for Literature in 2004. ... margini Literary...