Featured titles
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The Book of Legendary Lands - 2013
Rights sold: Russia - SLOVO
Places that have never existed except in the human imagination may find an incongruous afterlife in the everyday world. Umberto Eco tells of how an attempt to commemorate the brownstone New York home of Nero Wolfe, Rex Stout’s orchid-loving fictional detective, runs up against the resistance of fact. Wolfe’s house cannot be identified because Stout “always talked of a brownstone at a certain number on West 35th Street, but in the course of his novels he mentioned at least ten different street numbers – and what is more, there are no brownstones on 35th Street”. Using Eco’s typology, a fiction has been transmuted into a legend: “Legendary lands and places are of various kinds and have only one characteristic in common: whether they depend on ancient legends whose origins are lost in the mists of time or whether they are in effect a modern invention, they have created flows of belief.” (from John Gray's review on English-language edition, full text http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/11/no-place-home)
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Not Russian, a novel by Mikhail Shevelev
German rights are handled by Christina Links:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Rights sold: Czech Republic - PROSTOR, France – GALLIMARD, Italy - E/O, Russia – ZAKHAROV, World English rights - EUROPA EDITIONS
One always pays over and above for his cowardice, treachery, or indifference, and the bill always comes at wrong time, and in most unexpected form. And you always pay yourself, no group discounts applied.
Protagonist of this psychological thriller finds himself being responsible for lives and safety of dozens of others. To save them, he should understand was he has done wrong in the past.
Dynamic, concentrated narrative of Mikhail Shevelev’s NOT RUSSIAN is written in the genre of retrospective journalist investigation, where real facts of recent Russian history are masterfully merged with fiction.
Pavel, the main hero and narrator of Shevelev’s novel, a reporter by profession, in early 1990ies has delivered Vadim, a young soldier, back to Russia from Chechen captivity. But things did not come around for Vadim as they both expected, and fifteen years later he unwillingly became a terrorist, taking hostage a congregation of the church outside Moscow. Pavel is called upon to serve as negotiator. To right the ship, Pavel should convince Russian president publicly recognize his political mistakes, and apologize for triggering wars in Chechnya and Ukraine.
I wrote this novel, Shevelev says, after I suddenly realized that journalism is no more an effective tool for changing social realm. I believe that in Russia today literature can do more than journalism.
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