Les Escales│Foreign Rights│FRANKFURT 2013

FRANKFURT BOOK FAIR 2013

FOREIGN RIGHTS MANAGER: SARAH RIGAUD srigaud@lesescales.fr

MOSCOW BABYLON OWEN MATTHEWS

AUGUST 2013

“Listen: This is an account of my journey into a place of aberration, a zone of moral distortion, a world where all the outwards forms of civilization survive but are hollowed out and empty.

I thought, when I first arrived here, that I was on a roller coaster operated for my own amusement. But in fact I was in a spiralling Inferno, where the trivial decadences of the surface life gave way to ever-deeper circles of depravity and fear. I thought that I would find some truth at the end of it all, some dark secret glittering in the dark like coal. But instead I found that there was no truth other than what was obvious already in the first circle, that man is a beast.

I went to Russia because I wanted to find a place that was free and was real. But instead I found despair, impacted rage, impotence, gnawing resentment. This place has reached into my soul and twisted it out of shape.

I came here young and bright and full of adventure.

Now I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unpleasant man. And there is no help.”

145 x 225 - 350 pages WORLD EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATION RIGHTS SOLD TO : GRAF VERLAG (GERMAN)

“Owen Matthews inherited three distinct qualities from his Russian mother and British father: a taste for adventure, a cynical outlook and a sense for tragedy.

These are showcased in his new and extraordinary novel whose narrative power is even greater than Stalin’s Children (if you can believe it). This time, we follow his hero, his double, in the subterranean exciting and outrageous city that is Moscow in the mid nineties […] Spectacular!” - Le Figaro Magazine

Owen Matthews is the author of the international literary phenomenon memoir STALIN’S CHILDREN, which was sold in more than 20 countries. The French edition was shortlisted for the Prix Médicis Etranger.

Moscow Babylon is Matthews’ first novel, to which Les Escales hold world rights.

Foreign Rights Manager: Sarah Rigaud srigaud@lesescales.fr

EN ATTENDANT QUE LES BEAUX JOURS REVIENNENT CÉCILE HAREL

AUGUST 2012

Like every year, Marie wants to spend Christmas eve on her mother’s grave. While she explains this to her husband, a screenwriter who has stopped writing to devote his time to their love, Marie revisits her past, and the history of her family, unearthing secrets never told before as ell as luminous recollections.

Marie is the youngest of four children. She has trouble existing among her three older, eccentric, brothers and a fickle and unfaithful father. She decides to distance herself from them in rder to find her true self.

But Marie only manages to lose herself even more.

She works odd jobs in St Tropez or Paris, she has often dangerous encounters with strangers… She dreams of being an actress but when opportunity arises does everything not to take it…

Because the one who should have been an artist is her brother Ferdinand. Ferdinand who she sees losing touch with reality as he orders helicopters to warn the Kremlin of impending wars… To help her brother, Marie will try everything but other combats await her.

145 x 225 - 288 pages RIGHTS SOLD TO : PIPER (GERMAN)

At the same time melancholy and luminous, violent and tender, this is the portrait of a woman in search of herself, her roots and love.

All these hours in the life of a woman are touched upon gracefully and with sensitivity. It is an even more heartbreaking and powerful novel because of its tone which never gives into pathos.

“Cécile Harel’s first novel is really surprising. It is an extremely moving book.”

- David Foenkinos

Cécile Harel lives on the Mediterranean where she fulfils her childhood dream by swimming every morning, summer or winter.

She would also like a spring, an orchard, a vegetable garden and chickens to be completely self-sufficient.

Foreign Rights Manager: Sarah Rigaud srigaud@lesescales.fr

ARTICLE 122-1 DAVID MESSAGER

JUNE 2013

Estelle Lacroix is a fortysomething police captain with a dark secret: she is schizophrenic and can only function with the aid of her medication and her therapy sessions. Her private life is unravelling as well; she risks losing custody of her teenage daughter because of the unpredictable hours she keeps at her job.

Estelle and her partner, Gordinsky are assigned to investigate the murder of a young woman in the catacombs of Paris. The killer’s MO is erily similar to the one of a legendary serial killer from the 80’s, Mygale who has never been caught and had seemingly stopped all activity.

For Estelle it is clear that this murder is the work of a copycat. But why emulate Mygale?

Is Estelle being played by someone who knows her secret fear of spiders?

She will find herself at the heart of a deadly trap that is slowly closing in on her…

154 x 240 - 384 pages OVER 35,000 COPIES SOLD!

“This Parisian thriller is very well staged and put together by an insider of judicial practices. He has the good taste not to delve too much into the gory or procedural and to perfect his main character, a policewoman who is as touching as she is professional.

We want more!” - L’Express

This is David Messager’s first noir novel.

He knows the criminal world very well as he has been an examining magistrate for over ten years.

Foreign Rights Manager: Sarah Rigaud srigaud@lesescales.fr

ÉCLATS DE VOIX YVES HUGHES

FEBRUARY 2013

Elodie Douvet is the young host of a nightly phone in show whose soothing voice unravels the problems of the callers.

Why has someone chosen to strangle her? To softly strangle her as the autopsy showed.

Her fans are devastated: who could do something like that to their idol? A disgruntled listener? A ealous colleague? A jilter lover?

The list is long, and Rosalie might not have been as sweet as she sounded…

Yann Gray is put in charge of the investigation. The atypical cop, who has a bullet lodged in his brain which gives him olfactory allocation, is bsessive in everything he does, be it gardening or his job.

He throws himself in an investigation that will take him in the maze of the radio station, in psychiatric hospital and in the newsroom of a gossip magazine…

145 x 225 - 432 pages

Yves Hughes writes for television and the radio. He has also published novels with Stock. The character of Yann Gray first appeared in a series for younger readers published by Gallimard Jeunesse.

Foreign Rights Manager: Sarah Rigaud srigaud@lesescales.fr

Foreign Rights Manager : Sarah Rigaud srigaud@lesescales.fr First - Gründ - Dragon d’Or - Tana - Les Escales / EDI8, 12 avenue d’Italie, 75013 Paris - France