Pontas hot list fkt 2014

Literary & Film Agency

Hot List Frankfurt 2014

A bridge between storytelling and cultures, between books and films

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Jack Cheng

©Josh Wool

Jack Cheng is a Shanghai-born, Michigan-bred, Brooklyn-based writer. He is a former advertising copywriter and cofounder of Disrupto, an interactive design studio building websites and apps for startups and large media companies alike. He has been travelling since summer 2013 and is currently in Detroit.

These Days Connor Vast designs fake computer interfaces.

Not the ones you see in sci-fi movies or primetime crime dramas, though he’s worked on a couple of those in the past. The interfaces he designs tend to be static: they are the screens for prop computers in furniture showrooms. Young creative professional, child of the internet, refugee of the suburban Midwest, Connor goes about his life and work in New York City with a stream of status updates flowing constantly in the background.

He meets K, a gamine twenty-four-year-old who doesn’t own a cellphone. As he gets to know her, Connor realizes he’s strayed from his younger ambitions of designing real interfaces, working on real technology. He soon falls in with a group of entrepreneurs out to invent the future, but it’s the same future K is so adamantly against.

Original language: English Self-published in 2013 as a hardcover and ebook after raising support on Kickstarter 368 pages

These Days is a foray into the world of startups and an examination of the human side of technology, of both the makers and the end users, who are often one and the same. It’s about finding happiness and fulfillment in the digital age; a meditation on time, memory, and things gained and lost in an accelerating world.

“It’s an excellent book. Cheng is a gifted writer and the book is well-crafted—the story is engaging and the writing itself is superb. Although his two main characters have very different approaches to technology, Cheng is careful neither to glorify nor demonize technology, choosing instead to show both its possibilities and its limitations.” Jonathan Liu, Geekdad.com “Jack Cheng paints a rich backdrop of New York City, people, and the start-up scene… For a love story, this is one of the most complex I’ve read in a while. It has all the beauty, ugliness, and heartbreak of a real relationship.” Goodreads.com “A beautiful novel that takes us through the relationship of two 20-somethings who have alternate views on memory, love, and technology… Buy a paper copy, write a love note, and give it to someone you love or leave it in a coffee shop to be shared and enjoyed.” Amazon. com reader

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© Jude Ford-Rabin

Sean Rabin Born in Hobart, Tasmania, Sean Rabin has worked as a dishwasher, cook, script reader, copy-editor and journalist. He has lived in Ireland, Italy, London and New York, and now resides in Sydney, Australia. When not writing, he is reading and listening to music. His short stories have been published in Australia and the United States.

Wood Green In a small town at the foot of a mountain on the edge of the world, Norman Pollard’s until now unremarkable life is about to change forever. Having just completed his PhD in Sydney he arrives in Tasmania to take up the job as secretary to Lucian Clarke, an internationally renowned author whose work is the subject of Norman’s thesis.

Original language: English 231 pages

Clarke had once traveled the world living a life like Hemingway but now lives as a recluse in his hometown of Wood Green. Both men, the young apprentice and the aging master, have hidden agendas of their own and the reader curiously follows how their relationship evolves and how true aims are revealed.

Along the way you become captivated by an unforgettable town and the quirky characters connected in its web. At turns humorous and warm and at turns mysterious and surreal, Wood Green builds to a surprising climax and exerts a magnetic power over the reader.

One of Sean Rabin’s short stories, was selected for the Best Australian Short Stories (2012) published by Black Inc. The editor, Sonya Hartnett, singled out Sean’s story as the very best in this anthology: “The highlight for me is ‘I Can Hear the Ice Singing’ by Sean Rabin... It is puzzling, perfectly written and embodies the enduring power of a story that draws us in, igniting our imagination.” The same can be said of Sean Rabin’s debut novel. Wood Green announces the emergence of a distinctive and powerful new voice in antipodean literature.

“The highlight for me is ‘I Can Hear the Ice Singing’ by Sean Rabin...It is puzzling, perfectly written and embodies the enduring power of a story that draws us in, igniting our imagination.” Sonya Hartnett, editor at Black Inc.

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Milena Busquets

Milena Busquets was born in Barcelona in 1972. She attended the Lycée Français de Barcelone and obtained a degree in Archeaology from the Institute of Archeaology in University College London. She worked for many years at Editorial Lumen, the publishing house that her family had set up in the early 60’s and that was sold to Random House forty years later.

She later founded her own publishing house, wrote a first novel, worked for a gossip magazine and as a PR for a fashion brand. She currently works as a journalist and as a translator from English and French into Spanish.

This Too Shall Pass This Too Shall Pass is a novel about loss, love and sex. The main character, Blanca, has just lost her mother. She decides to embark on a journey to the fishing village of Cadaqués (the Catalan equivalent of St. Tropez), where the summer family house is, together with her kids, her two ex husbands, her lover and a bunch of friends.

What she finds there, however, is the core of the passionate and complex relationship she had with her deceased mother. Shifting from the heavy and intense to the lightest details and observations, Milena Busquets could be described as a Françoise Sagan of the 21st century.

This Too Shall Pass, an adage from a fable indicating that all material conditions, positive or negative, are temporary, is also a novel bursting with sensitivity, toughness and remarkable absence of self-compliance.

Original title: También esto pasará Original language: Spanish To be published in 2015 190 pages RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | Amsterdam Llibres DUTCH | Meulenhoff FRENCH | Gallimard GERMAN | Suhrkamp ITALIAN | Rizzoli/RCS Libri SPANISH | Anagrama PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Companhia das letras

English translation available

“We all see different things, and we all see the same things. What we see defines us. And, indistinctively, we love those who see the same things that we see. We recognise them instantly. You put a man in the middle of a street and you ask him ‘What do you see?’. And there, in his answer, you will have it all, like in a fairytale. What we think is not so important. What we see is what matters.”

“I haven’t been able to stop reading it. I really loved it. A lot. And it moved me. A lot. The final epilogue is simply beautiful.” Izaskun Arretxe, publisher, Ara Llibres “I feel very happy to be publishing this novel! I think that it could be the start of an excellent career as a writer.” Jorge Herralde, founder and publisher, Anagrama «Her voice is so special, I don’t know where it comes from.» Frank Wegner, Suhrkamp «This is a beautiful, funny (even at times cynical –which I like!), extraordinarily well written novel. I spent all day today jumping around the office telling everyone about it. What an unprecedented reading experience this is –what an exciting novel.» Paloma Sanchez van Dijck, Meulenhoff

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Fiston Mwanza Mujila Born in Lubumbashi (Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1981, Fiston Mwanza Mujila lives in Graz (Austria). He regularly participates in the literary activities organized in his home town, in Kinshasa, Nairobi or Brussels. His writing has been awarded with numerous prizes, among which the Golden Medal in the sixth Games of the Francophony in Beirut, as well as the Best Text for Theater (Preizfür das beste Stück, State Theater, Mainz).

Tram 83 In an African city in secession, which could be Kinshasa or Lubumbashi, flock tourists of all languages and nationalities. They have only one desire: to make a fortune by exploiting the mineral wealth of the country. They work during the day in mining concession and, as soon as night falls, they go out to get drunk, dance, eat and abandon themselves in Tram 83, the only night-club of the city, the den of all the outlaws: ex children-soldiers, prostitutes, blank students, unmarried mothers, sorcerers’ apprentices…

Lucien, a professional writer, fleeing the exactions and the censorship, finds refuge in the city thanks to Requiem, a friend from his youth.. Requiem lives mainly by stealing while Lucien only thinks of writing and living honestly.

Around them gravitate gangsters and young girls, retired or runaway men, profit-seeking tourists and federal agents of a non-existent State.

Original language: French Published in 2014 184 pages

RIGHTS SOLD FRENCH | Ed. Métailié CATALAN | Edicions del Periscopi ENGLISH (North America) | Deep Vellum Publishing ENGLISH (UK & Ireland) | Jacaranda Books GERMAN | Zsolnay und Deuticke (Hanser) ITALIAN | Nottetempo

Tram 83 plunges the reader into the atmosphere of a gold rush as cynical as it is oftentimes comic and exotic. It’s an observation of human relationships in a world that has become a global village. It could be described as an African-rap or rhapsody novel or puzzle-novel hammered by rhythms of jazz.

• Shortlisted for the Prix du Monde 2014 (Le Monde) • Shortlisted for the Prix Wepler-Fondation La Poste “One of the most exciting discoveries of the rentrée. (...) There is some Hieronymus Bosch in this frenetic, flamboyant, closed-door city slicker. An insolent, globe-trotting Hieronymus Bosch, one who would have read Gabriel García Márquez and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.”

Le Monde “A real discovery among the novels of the rentrée.” Alain Mabanckou, Jeune Afrique “So how adventurous are US/UK publishers? Who will take a stap at Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83? Because seriously- someone has to.” The Literary Saloon www.pontas-agency.com

Susan Abulhawa Susan Abulhawa was born to refugees of the 1967 War, battle in which Israel captured what remained of Palestinian territory. In 2002 she founded Playgrounds for Palestine, an organization that builds and maintains playgrounds for children in Palestine. Her debut novel Mornings in Jenin was acquired by 25 international publishers and has sold 500.000 copies worldwide. Susan currently lives in Pennsylvania, USA.

The Blue Between Sky and Water Set between Palestine and the United States, this is a novel that brightly interweaves political and family history. It is a very touching exploration of family and roots and how they define who we are, not only in Palestinian culture and history, but also on a very universal level.

A boy named Khaled tells this story in Gaza, from the blue between sky and water. He sits silently in the midst of four generations of women who move through the world around him, arranging their lives according to the rhythms of his body.

His great grandmother spoke with the jinn, and his great aunt Mariam remained forever ten years old by the river when Israel stole their heritage and made of them refugees. His grandmother Nazmiyeh, was the baddest, prettiest girl in Beit Daras. She was the eternal ringleader, the sassy matriarch who nurtured them all and hung the sky. His mother, Alwan, loved quietly and endlessly. Her embroidery sustained the family, and she stitched the stars and moon in place.

Original language: English To be published in 2015 322 pages

RIGHTS SOLD DUTCH | De Geus ENGLISH (World) | Bloomsbury FINNISH | Like GERMAN | Diana Verlag ITALIAN | Feltrinelli NORWEGIAN | Aschehoug PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Récord SWEDISH | Nordstedts

She hid her pain under her skin, in her vital organs. His mother’s cousin, Nur, is the one who got lost in America. She came back searching the Mediterranean shore for her parts. The old beekeeper’s widow was related to them only by love. She suffused their lives with myrrh and mirth. And Rhet Shel, his little sister, was the promise they all made to each other. She held up the sun.

Mornings in Jenin “An intensely beautiful fictionalized history that should be read by both politicians and those interested in contemporary politics.

Highly recommended.” Library Journal “A powerful and passionate novel.” Michael Palin “Never had I read a more fascinating novel about Palestine an Israel.

It gave me insight and afected me emotionally in the way only great novels do.” Henning Mankell

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HAN YUJOO With the publication of her first novel, Impossible Fairytale, Han has at age thirtyone cemented her reputation as a writer.

Rights Sold:

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- Decrescenzo, France

- Moonji, S. Korea

- Graywolf, World English

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Professor Bruce Fulton Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Studies, University of British Columbia

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RIGHTS CONTACT: Kelly Falconer Asia Literary Agency Hong Kong

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kelly@asialiteraryagency,org

Impossible Fairytale

World Rights Available (ex. English, French & Korean) 'You visited me like a dream.'

!The child who stepped out of the story opened the door and came in.

This is either impossible or not impossible.’

Korean fiction in the new millennium is more imaginative than ever before, and no Korean writer is more imaginative than Han Yujoo.

!Impossible Fairytale is !Combining the recursive flow of the Korean oral nothing less than a metafiction masterpiece, from THE Bright Young Thing of Korean Literature, Han Yujoo.

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tradition with glimpses of the evil that threatens to poke through the stiff fabric of centuries of neoConfucian social control, stories such as “Blackand-White Photographer”

and “Ash Wednesday” challenge readers, critics, and writers alike to push the boundaries of an elite literary tradition that risks being swept into desuetude before the wave of Korean popular culture that is washing over the world.

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Prof. Bruce Fulton

About the author Han Yujoo debuted in 2003 with her short story To the Moon, which won Literature and Society's New Writers Award. Impossible Fairytale, has recently been published by Moonji, Korea, which has also published her three collections of short stories: To the Moon, Book of Ice and My Left Hand the King My Right Hand the King's Scribe. !

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Yujoo read German literature at Seoul National University, and has translated the works of Geoff Dyer and Michael Ondaatje into Korean. She won the prestigious Hankook Ilbo Literary Award in 2009 and currently teaches at the Seoul Institute of the Arts. The French translation of Impossible Fairytale will be published by Decrescenzo in 2015.

Asia Literary Agency Rights List - www.asialiteraryagency.org

© Scott Soderberg

Chigozie Obioma Chigozie Obioma was born in Akure, Nigeria. He was an OMI fellow at Ledig House, New York, and has won the Hopwood Awards for fiction and poetry. He has lived in Nigeria, Cyprus, Turkey and currently lives in the United States where he is a Helen Zell Fellow in creative writing at the University of Michigan. An excerpt of The Fishermen was published in the Virginia Quarterly Review.

The Fishermen Told from the point of view of nine-year-old Benjamin, the youngest of four brothers, The Fishermen is the Cain and Abel-esque story of an unforgettable childhood in 1990s Nigeria.

When their father has to travel to a distant city for work, the brothers take advantage of his extended absence to skip school and go fishing. At the forbidden nearby river they encounter a madman, who predicts that one of the brothers will kill another. Thus, an extraordinary tension is created and an almost mythic chain of events—both tragic and redemptive--is set into motion that will transform the lives and imaginations of the novel’s characters and its readers.

The Fishermen is a debut novel of astonishing visceral power; it tells a painful story with supreme elegance and grace. Chigozie Obioma emerges as one of the best new voices of modern African literature, echoing its older generation´s masterful storytelling with a contemporary fearlessness and purpose.

Original language: English To be published in Spring 2015 352 pages RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (UK & Commonwealth) | ONE/ Pushkin Press ENGLISH (Australia) | Scribe ENGLISH (US & Canada) | Little, Brown DUTCH | De Geus FRENCH | Editions de l´Olivier GERMAN | Aufbau ITALIAN | Bompiani KOREAN | Cresma PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Globo SPANISH | Siruela

“Obioma’s remarkable fiction is at once urgently, vividly immediate, yet simultaneously charged with the elemental power of myth.” Peter Ho Davies

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Marie Bennett Marie Bennett (Malmö, 1969) studied Art History in the University of Lund, Sweden, and Journalism in the City University, England. She lived in Paris, California and Madrid before landing in London, where she settled to work in media and where she has lived with her family for the last 18 years. Hotell Angleterre is her first novel, and took her four years to complete. She is currently working on a second novel with another exciting historical period and setting.

Hotell Angleterre Sweden, 1940-1944. The Second World War rages in neighboring occupied Denmark, German bombs falling over Copenhagen, just a stone-throw away from Malmö. Though Sweden is supposed to be neutral, the war is knocking on its door and there is a great paranoia against Communists and other “social enemies” throughout the country, and also a fear of spies and traitors. It is a period of rationing, insecurity, censorship, military abuse and harsh winters, when the worst thing you could call someone was not “Nazi” but “communist”.

Original title: Hotell Angleterre Original language: Swedish To be published in 2015 542 pages

RIGHTS SOLD SWEDISH | Wahlström & Widstrand

The story in Hotell Angleterre takes off during the dramatic but today completely forgotten event that took place during this time in the North of Sweden, when a couple of Swedish soldiers froze to death during the winter of 1939 and, as a consequence of this, the other soldiers mutinied against officers. The novel follows the lives of Georg, a young soldier from Malmö that gets sent to the North, his wife Kerstin, who remains at home witnessing the war in Europe from the front seat, and the enigmatic Viola, suspected of being a spy and with whom Kerstin maintains a brief affair during her husband’s absence. Their lives, like everyone’s at the time, are torn by war, politics and fear.

Love, betrayal, compassion and forgiveness, and the universal human will to survive and move forward in the face of adversity, are all present in this unputdownable and gripping debut by Marie Bennett.

“A pure joy to read! Well written, well researched and with that certain page-turning quality.

I really believe Marie’s story has great potential to become a bestseller in Sweden.”

Helene Atterling, Senior Editor, Wahlström & Widstrand

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Leila S. Chudori Leila S. Chudori (Jakarta, 1962) is Indonesia’s most prominent and outspoken female journalist. She works at TEMPO News Magazine of Indonesia since 1989. She also is considered one of Indonesia’s boldest story-tellers and is a well-known figure in the Indonesian literary scene.

She is the author of several anthologies of short stories, a novel, TV and film scripts. Leila lives in Jakarta with her daughter, Rain ChudoriSoerjoatmodjo.

Home Pulang is both a family saga and a story of exile and homecoming, set against the background of historical events in Paris and Indonesia. These events include two dark and violent periods of Indonesia’s history: the 1965 communist purge that marked the rise of the longest-serving Indonesian president Soeharto, and his fall in 1998.

The novel has been described by The Jakarta Globe as “an epic, an ambitious slab of fiction crammed with a rich and diverse cast of characters whose lives have been swept along by Indonesia’s dramatic and at times extremely tragic contemporary history.(...) A wonderful exercise in humanism. It is first and foremost a story about love, passion as well as a sensual —almost primordial— attachment to the land. (...) Chudori balances the grand and bloody national narrative with an intimate and deeply-felt evocation of how the drama and violence of those years and indeed of the subsequent Reformasi period was played out family by family, individual by individual. On a certain level, “Pulang” is also an extended love letter to Indonesia, an evocation of a mood, a state of mind and a place”.

To achieve the rich wealth of historical detail in Pulang, Leila spent six years researching, reading and conducting interviews with Indonesian political exiles living in Paris, such as Oemar Said and Sobron Aidit, owners of Restaurant Indonesia.

Original title: Pulang Original language: Bahasa Indonesia Published in 2013 474 pages

RIGHTS SOLD BAHASA INDONESIA | Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia DUTCH | De Geus ENGLISH (North America) | Deep Vellum Publishing ENGLISH (South East Asia) | Lontar GERMAN | Weidle Verlag English translation available

• Winner of the prestigious Khatulistiwa Literary Award.

• 5th edition printed in Indonesia.

“Pulang is a novel I’ve been waiting to read — a book of grandeur and intimacy, love and brutality, a book that envelops you into the cultural, historical and geographical vortex that is Indonesia, without for once ever losing its eagle-eyed focus on the human soul.

This is an important work, sophisticated, wise and poignant from a novelist at the height of her powers.” Karin Raslan, The Jakarta Globe “This novel lifted grey shadows from the history of our country, not in terms of political and ideological understandings, but more from the point of view of those who were lost, who were separated from their families, figures who longed for a home they couldn’t return to.” Goodreads www.pontas-agency.com

Imraan Coovadia Imraan Coovadia is a writer and director of the creative writing programme at the University of Cape Town. His fiction has been published in a number of countries, and he has written for the New York Times, Boston Globe, Times of India and Sunday Independent. He graduated from Harvard College. His family has been involved in politics since his greatuncle was thrown off an electric tram in Johannesburg in 1906 as part of Mahatma Gandhi’s attempt to test the legal standing of discriminatory laws in what was then the South African Republic.

Tales of the Metric System Inspired by books like David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten and Chimamanda Adichie’s Half a Yellow Sun, and films like The Lives of Others, Tales of the Metric System tells the story of modern South Africa one day at a time from high apartheid to the staging of the World Cup forty years later.

1970. Anne Rabie reckons with the expulsion of her son Henry from a private boarding school, with the difficulties of being under the surveillance of the security police because of her husband’s political activities, and with the various participants in the Free University.

Original language: English To be published in 2014 360 pages

RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (South Africa) | Struik Random House

1973. A young black man who lives in a workers’ boarding house finds that the pass he needs to show to travel around the city has been stolen.

Victor needs to find it before the end of the day.

1979. Yash, a working-class Indian, plays rock guitar in segregated bars and restaurants. Yash takes his son around with him to plead for the chance to keep playing.

These characters and those involved with them return, always for a day at a time, and face the new situations brought about by the conflict. The novel covers the changes in the artistic, political, and intellectual life of South Africa and its social conditions beginning in the high apartheid period and following these circumstances as the old system disintegrates.

The characters are black, white, Indian, ranging from the privileged and disaffected, including professors and philosophers, to working class characters, and individuals and communities at the margins of the society.

“Tales of the Metric System leaves the reader with a sense of having undertaken a journey through the familiar only to arrive somewhere completely new.”Aminatta Forna “Coovadia is the symptom of new cultural and critical energies bursting to reshape the South African literary canon and the way it is viewed in the world” Monica Popescu, author of South African Literature Beyond the Cold War

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Janice Pariat Janice Pariat is based between the UK and India. Her first book Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories (Random House, India 2012) was shortlisted for the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi (Indian National Academy of Letters) and the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, and was longlisted for the Frank O´Connor Short Story Award 2013. It gained further national attention upon winning the prestigious Crossword Award for Fiction.

Seahorse Nehemiah is a student of English Literature at Delhi University when he first meets art historian Nicholas Petrou who, as mentor, steers him into a world of pleasure and artistic discovery- transforming his life entirely.

Years later, during a seemingly innocuous spell in London as a Writer in Residence, the unexpected happnes- lives, like passing ships, are re-illuminated. Nehemiah receives a mysterious message that plunges him into a search for Nicholas and his stepsister- and even himself, the directionless boy changed irrevocably by his encounter with the art historian.

Original language: English 250 pages To be published in 2014

RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (Indian subcontinent) | Random House India

Seahorse is a contemporary retelling of the story of the sea-god Poseidon and his youthful male lover Pelops. The young men in these narratives must journey beyond themselves to wrestle free from the protective yet stifling gods of their pasts. The novel traces how lass and healing, undoing and recreation, eventually shape us into creatures of grace.

“Seahorse marks Janice Pariat’s arrival as one of India’s most original novelists, and probably the brightest of her generation.” Meru Gokhale, Editor-in-Chief, Literary Publishing, Penguin Random House India

Also by Janice Pariat, Boats on Land: “Revelatory and Original.” Jeet Thayil “Janice’s stories announce the arrival of a startlingly brilliant and compassionate writer whose book is as haunting as the world it emerges from.” Siddhartha Deb “Poignant, subtle and nuanced, a writer to watch out for.” Manju Kapur

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© Randall Wood

Jamie Mason Jamie Mason was born in Oklahoma City, but grew up in Washington, D.C. Jamie lives with her husband and two daughters in the mountains of western North Carolina. Her first novel, Three Graves Full, was published in the US by Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster and in the UK by ONE/ Pushkin Press; and translated into Czech , Dutch, German and Japanese; and optioned for film by StanleyWeiser (screenwriter of ‘Wall Street’).

Monday’s Lie From the acclaimed author of the “ripping good” (The New York Times) debut novel Three Graves Full comes a new thriller about a woman who digs into her unconventional past to confirm what she suspects: her husband wants her dead.

Dee Aldrich rebelled against her off-center upbringing when she married the most conventional man she could imagine: Patrick, her college sweetheart. But now, years later, her marriage is falling apart and she’s starting to believe that her husband wants her gone…for good.

Original language: English To be published in February 2015 304 pages

RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (US & Canada) | Gallery Books

Haunted by memories of her late mother Annette, a former covert operations asset, Dee reaches back into her childhood to resurrect the lessons and “spy games” in which she learned memory tricks and, most importantly, how and when to lie. But just as she begins delving into her past to determine the course of the future, she makes a discovery that will change her life: the money that her mother left behind. Now, Dee must investigate her suspicions before it’s too late and untangle conspiracy from coincidence, using her mother’s advice to steer her through the blind spots. The trick, in the end, will be in discovering if a “normal life” is really what she wanted at all.

With pulse-pounding prose and atmospheric settings, Monday´s Lie is a thriller that delivers more of the “Hitchcockian menace” (Peter Straub) that made Three Graves Full a critical hit.

“It´s a gripping read, beautifully written, dotted with moments of black comedy, and pulsing with an undercurrent of deep sadness.” Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of The Secret Place “A tense, gripping, witty hugely satisfying thriller about a marriage gone horribly awry. Jamie Mason has a terrific, terrifying imagination.” Chris Pavone, New York • A book that fans of the Coen brothers or Alexander McCall Smith won’t want to miss. www.pontas-agency.com

Cristina Sánchez-Andrade

Cristina Sánchez-Andrade (1968) has degrees in Law and Mass Media.

She collaborates in various Spanish newspapers and literary magazines as a critic and book reviewer. Her third novel Ya no pisa la tierra tu rey (Anagrama, 2004), won the prestigious literary prize Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz at the Guadalajara International Book Fair 2005, in Mexico, and has been translated into English and Portuguese. Las inviernas, her last novel, has gained outstanding critical acclaim.

The Winterlings Galicia, Spain’s northwest region, in the 1950’s.

Two mysterious sisters return to the small parish of Tierra de Chá after a long absence, united by a very dark incident committed in the past, and by their passion for film and the lives of the Hollywood artists. They return to the former home of their grandfather, from where they fled when they were children. At Tierra de chá, nothing and everything has changed, the people, the distant little house under the rain, the acrid smell of gorse, the flowers, the crops, the customs... For some reason, the return of the peculiar sisters disrupts the placid existence of the villagers. Why does nobody want to talk about Don Reinaldo, their grandfather? What events in the past are the women are concealing?

Why are they called «Las Inviernas», the Winterlings?

Original title: Las inviernas Original language: Spanish Published in 2014 250 pages

RIGHTS SOLD GERMAN | Thiele Verlag ITALIAN | Elliot Edizioni POLISH | Muza PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Alaúde SPANISH | Anagrama

• Las Inviernas is a charming, very literary and rural story with hues of the Spanish classics and also of southern gothic writers such as C. McCullers. It is a delicate but dark novel in which the author skillfully combines fiction and historical events while she masterly doses intrigue and a subtle and witty humour (also very dark).

• The two Winterlings, both perverse and lovable, will stay with the reader for a long time after the reading. A gothic, rural, quirky literary novel not to be missed.

“Something radically new in Spanish literature, original and unusual.” Manuel Rivas

Other titles by Cristina Sánchez Andrade

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Pontas Authors Susan Abulhawa Patricia Almarcegui Maria Àngels Anglada Alfonso Armada Federico Axat Lluís-Anton Baulenas Stéphanie Benson Alfredo de Braganza Blanca Busquets Milena Busquets Jordi Cabré Maite Carranza Roc Casagran David Castillo Jack Cheng Michelle Cohen Corasanti Imraan Coovadia Mitch Cullin Terese Cristiansson Antoni Dalmases Mainak Dhar

Carmen Domingo Alan Duff Nuria Esponellà Susana Fortes Pete Fromm Clemente García Novella Brandon S. Graham Ayesha Harruna Attah Susana Hernández A. E. Hochschild Maria Jaén Sándor Jászberényi Ramón Lobo Sara Lövestam Carme Martí Gabi Martínez Jamie Mason Maribel Medina Jason Eric Miller John W. Milton Miquel Molina

Fiston Mwanza Mujila Carl Nixon Chigozie Obioma Janice Pariat Zinat Pirzadeh Sean Rabin Dolores Redondo Cristina Sánchez-Andrade Carmen Santos Marie-Thérèse Schmitz Paul S. Sochaczewski James Terry Olivier Truc Eugenia Tusquets Emmanuelle Urien Judith Uyterlinde Guillermo Valcárcel Elisa Vázquez de Gey Teresa Viejo

Other clients

John Blake Publishers United Kingdom www.blake.co.uk In Spain, Portugal, Brazil & Italy

Asia Literary Agency Hong Kong www.asialiteraryagency.org In France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, Brazil, Spain, Portugal and Latin America

Lontar Foundation Indonesia www.lontar.org

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Anna Soler-Pont anna@pontas-agency.com Ricard Domingo ricard@pontas-agency.com Marc de Gouvenain marc@pontas-agency.com

Literary & Film Agency www.pontas-agency.com Sèneca, 31 E-08006 Barcelona Tel + 34 93 218 22 12

Marina Penalva marina@pontas-agency.com Jessica Craig jessica@pontas-agency.com Maria Cardona maria@pontas-agency.com Guenter G. Rodewald guenny@pontas-agency.com Leticia Vila-SanjuĂĄn leticia@pontas-agency.com

Founded in 1992 by Anna Soler-Pont, Pontas is a literary and film agency representing internationally a wide range of authors from all over the world.

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