Pontas rights list sept 2014

Literary & Film Agency

Rights List September 2014

A bridge between storytelling and cultures, between books and films

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.

Original language: English To be published in 2015 322 pages

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.

RIGHTS SOLD

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.

DUTCH | De Geus ENGLISH (World) | Bloomsbury FINNISH | Like GERMAN | Diana Verlag ITALIAN | Feltrinelli NORWEGIAN | Aschehoug 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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Maria Àngels Anglada Maria Àngels Anglada began her career with the poetry collection Díptic (1972), however it wasn’t until the publication of her first novel Les Closes (1978), that she garnered literary renown. Les Closes (currently published

by Destino) was awarded the Josep Pla Prize, and Anglada went on to publish numerous novels and books of poetry, becoming one of the most celebrated Catalan writers of all time.

A Violin in Auschwitz In the concentration camp Auschwitz, abuse, punishment and death are everyday occurrences among prisoners like Daniel, a Jewish flute maker from Krakow who thus far has managed to escape death by working as a skilled carpenter.

However one day the camp commander, a classical music enthusiast, discovers the prisoner’s skills and decides to put them to the test: he will have to craft the perfect violin. Daniel begins work straight away, entirely unaware of what his punishment will be should he fail.

Originally written in 1994 and recently republished to great success, A Violin in Auschwitz is a short masterpiece, a touching story that, like John Boyne´s international best-seller The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas, serves as a profound meditation on human dignity and resistance in the face of horrific adversity.

“Read this little book and it will haunt you forever. It vibrates with the sheer horror of inhumanity and the beautiful power of music.”

Tatiana de Rosnay, author of Sarah’s Key

Original title: El violí d´Auschwitz Original language: Catalan Published in 1994 127 pages RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | Columna DUTCH | De Geus ENGLISH (World) | Bantam Dell FRENCH | Stock (trade) Le Livre de Poche (pocket) GERMAN | Luchterhand GREEK | Konidaris ITALIAN | Rizzoli/RCS Libri POLISH | Muza PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Globo PORTUGUESE (Portugal) | Dom Quixote ROMANIAN | Meteor Press SERBIAN | Dereta SPANISH | Destino SWEDISH | Bonniers Forlag TURKISH | Guven Kitap FILM RIGHTS SOLD Sharon von Wietersheim/ Rich and Famous Overnight Film Produktions

Aram’s Diary With a deft and insightful eye, Anglada evoked the Jewish Holocaust in the much-lauded 1994 novel A Violin in Auschwitz. With the same mastery she sheds light on the Armenian genocide, exploring the oft-ignored massacres through a deeply affecting, oftentimes shocking tale.

Aram’s story, written with sobriety and deep sensibility, is a testament to human resilience and the will to fight.

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Original title: Quadern d´Aram Original language: Catalan Published in 1997 123 pages RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | Columna DUTCH | De Geus FRENCH | Stock GREEK | Konidaris ITALIAN | Angelica Editore SPANISH | Planeta ROMANIAN | Meteor Press

Federico Axat Federico Axat was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1975. His stories stand out for a high dose of suspense, plot twists and surprising and unexpected endings.

The Meadow of the Butterflies Year after year, people keep going missing under mysterious circumstances in Carnival Falls. Some residents are sure the tragedies have no relation to each other, while still others are convinced something far more sinister than simple accident underlies these baffling deaths.

In 1985, 12 year olds Sam and Billy have big expectations for the summer ahead; excursions into the forest, leisurely bicycle rides in the sun and plans to build a treehouse. However when the posh, gorgeous Miranda moves to town, everything is turned upside down. Together they embark on the intricate road from childhood to adolescence, a journey that will lead them to knowledge, revelation and an unexpected adventure that could unravel the mystery of their town´s disappearances…

Original title: El pantano de las mariposas Original language: Spanish Published in 2013 486 pages

RIGHTS SOLD SPANISH | Destino COMPLEX CHINESE | Doing Publishing PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Alaúde English sample available

A coming of age novel rife with startling suspense and moments of fantasy, The Meadow of the Butterflies immerses the reader in Axat´s fascinating world, culminating in an astonishing final twist no one will see coming.

“This is an absolutely beautiful novel. Side by side with on oldstyle flair, a certain timeless tone, some elements of both style and plot contrast break in occasionally, sharp, groundbreaking elements. One of these would be the end of the novel. Well, well, well, what an end! ” Silvia Sesé, Ediciones Destino

Other titles

by Federico Axat: Benjamin (2010)

“The Meadow of the Butterflies has it all: a well-built story, characters easy to identify with, the appropriate dosing in the plot and a beautiful writing that endows the reading with a really special charm.” Blog Planeta de Libros.

“Federico Axat provides us with a portrait of what friendship means in the most difficult moments. A walk from childhood into adolescence, a tough story, with again an excellent final twist. You will discover, with this novel, why Axat is one of the authors with a better renown in the last years.” Crónicas Literarias desde NY

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Lluís-Anton Baulenas

Lluís-Anton Baulenas is an acclaimed Catalan novelist and playwright.

Honored with numerous literary awards, including the Carlemany, Prudenci Bertrana, Serra d´Or Critics, Ramon Llull and Sant Jordi, Baulenas is one of the most widely translated Catalan writers of his time, with many of his novels having been adapted for film as well. His latest novel paints a realistic portrait of one of the most infamous neighborhoods in Barcelona, the Raval, capturing all the beauty, controversy and decadence that make this neighborhood so fascinating.

When The Pirate Comes When the Pirate Comes tells the story of two different, quirky characters joined by coincidence.

One, Miquel Deogràcies Gambús, is a 96 year old megalomaniac, the rich patriarch of a multinational company who is guarding a dark secret. The other, Jesus Carducci, is a middle-aged medical assistant in the Raval district of Barcelona who works parttime for Carducci´s company. The two men have nothing in common.

One day, however, a common interest impels Gambús to contact Carducci. Sure he is on the precipice of death, Gambús asks the medical assistant to help him fulfill a mission related to the secret he has guarded for so long. A mixture of curiosity and ambition persuades Carducci to accept this mysterious assignment, for he knows there is much money to be won.

Original title: Quan arribi el pirata i se m´emporti Original language: Catalan Published in 2013 250 pages RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | La Magrana SPANISH | RBA English sample available

“A robust and magnetic novel” ARA Newspaper “A merciless criticism of Barcelona and especially the Raval neighbourhood” Diari de Balears “I knew Baulenas was good but not this good: I think he’s superb.

It is not often that a ripping adventure-cum-mystery novel offers such a feast of food for thought.” Julie Wark, translator

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Other titles

by Lluís-Anton Baulenas:

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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© Joan Puerto

Blanca Busquets Blanca Busquets (Barcelona, 1961) is a writer and journalist. In 2011 her fifth novel, La nevada del cucut, was awarded the Premi Llibreter, the Catalan Booksellers Award, a significant prize which immediately became a milestone in her literary career. She is now translated into Spanish, Italian, French, Norwegian, Russian and German and is recognized unanimously as a prominent figure of contemporary Catalan literature.

Her novels explore women’s feelings and often deal with family secrets.

Half Spoken Words What unspeakable family secret took place on the night of February 23rd, 1981, on the same day that the attempted Spanish political coup took place? Three decades later, Annabel, Albert and Nina gather around their widowed father’s deadbed before he takes the secret to his grave.

The reader slowly learns the whole truth as events are remembered: the family’s humble origins in a small rural town in the center of Catalonia. Annabel’s decision to leave to Barcelona to become a teacher and her frustrated affair with a French lover. Albert’s choice to stay close to home, yet remain very secretive about his sentimental life. Nina’s life as a nun... there is always another side to the story that no one else knows about.

Original title: Paraules a mitges Original language: Catalan To be published in 2014 208 pages RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | Rosa dels Vents / Penguin Random House GERMAN | Bastei-Lübbe SPANISH | Grijalbo / Penguin Random House

Told by four different but very sincere and realistic voices, two female and two male, Half Spoken Words holds the reader ‘s breath from the first page to the last. It explores of feelings like few novels do, and is written in a beautiful and captivating prose that becomes hard to get separated from.

The House of Silence A violin lost and found is the thread that winds through this tightly-crafted suspense story of love across class lines. This engaging novel is told in alternating voices, revealing the perspectives and true motivations of three women and one man, bound together by music and their relationship with a charismatic orchestra director who emigrated to Barcelona from behind the Iron Curtain.

The love of music they share is tempered by ambition, envy and greed,which simmer to a crescendo on the evening of a classical concert in Berlin, when the presence of an old lady in the audience makes some members of the orchestra very nervous.

Set between Germany and Spain throughout the 20th century, this romantic page-turner keeps readers guessing until the final revelation, a love letter to seek beyond the grave. www.pontas-agency.com

Original title: La casa del silenci Original language: Catalan Published in 2013 236 pages RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | Rosa dels Vents / Penguin Random House FRENCH | Les Escales GERMAN | Bastei-Lübbe ITALIAN | Piemme NORWEGIAN | Cappelen Damm SPANISH | Grijalbo / Penguin Random House English sample available

Milena Busquets

Milena Busquets was born in Barcelona in 1972- She attended the Lycée Français de Barcelone. She obtained a degree in Archeaology from the Institute of Archeaology in UCL (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.

Original title: También esto pasará Original language: Spanish To be published in 2015 190 pages RIGHTS SOLD SPANISH | Anagrama CATALAN | Amsterdam Llibres

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.

“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

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Maite Carranza Maite Carranza (Barcelona, 1958) writes fiction for children and young adults as well as television scripts, and teaches university courses in scriptwriting. Her work has been translated into more than 30 languages, selling over 500,000 copies worldwide, and she has been awarded, among other prizes, the Premio Nacional de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil - Children and YA Literature National Prize in Spain and the Premio Cervantes Chico.

The Fruit of the Baobab Set in the outskirts of Barcelona, this is a story told from the perspective of three women. One is Binta, the eldest daughter in this familiy who came to live in Mataró (Barcelona) as a child and now, at 14, has fully integrated into the European way of life, and aspires to go to university. She doesn´t accept her cultural origins and, in particular, rebels against her mother´s conservative view points.

The second woman is her mother, an uneducated woman who lives a completely isolated life, confined to her home where she raises four small children with little communication with her husband. The third perspective is that of Lola, a middle-aged Catalan pediatrician who, after a failed relationship, begins a new life and becomes intertwined in Binta´s familial problems.

Original title: El fruit del baobab Original language: Catalan Published in 2013 399 pages

RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | Edicions 62 NORWEGIAN | Juritzen Forlag SPANISH | Espasa Calpe

English sample available

The conflict begins when Binta learns her father intends to travel back to Gambia with her 6 year old sister, where female circumcision will be performed upon her. Binta deeply resents having been mutilated in Africa; she has begun to date Catalan boys, and feels like an outsider.

Initially the mother doesn´t object to her daughter´s circumcision, however soon discovers another reason for her husband´s trip; he has already “bought” another wife…

“I cried reading it! It is intense, genuine and brave, without being at all demagogic. The reading flows seamlessly and the characters… you simply believe them, and love them.”

Berta Noy, editor of Espasa Calpe • A strongly emotional novel. A novel about moral and justice, and will appeal to the same kind of readers who have enjoyed novels such as The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, or are fans of Ken Loach’s films.

• A wonderful, attractive and very well plotted novel about friendship between women under difficult circumstances and across different cultures.

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Other titles

by Maite Carranza available for film rights:

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”.

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

RIGHTS SOLD BAHASA INDONESIA | Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia DUTCH | De Geus ENGLISH (South East Asia) | Lontar GERMAN | Weidle Verlag

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.

• 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

Michelle Cohen Corasanti

Michelle Cohen Corasanti has a BA from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a MA from Harvard University, both in Middle Eastern Studies. She also holds a law degree. A Jewish American, she lives in the US with her husband and two children. The Almond Tree is her first novel and has been translated into 14 languages, and has been a big sales success in the countries where it has been published.

The Almond Tree The Almond Tree is a rags-to-riches tale with a Palestinian protagonist spanning from the 1950s to the present with a broad international appeal. The book is broken up into four parts that take place over different periods of a young Palestinian boy´s life. Gifted with a mind that continues to impress the elders in his village, Ichmad Hamid struggles with the knowledge that he can do nothing to save his Palestinian friends and family.

Ruled by the Israeli military government, the entire village operates in fear of losing homes, jobs, and belongings. But more importantly, they fear losing each other. On Ichmad’s twelfth birthday, that fear becomes a reality. With his father imprisoned, his family’s home and possessions confiscated, and his siblings quickly succumbing to the dangers of war, Ichmad begins the endless struggle to use his intellect to save his poor and dying family and reclaim a love for others that was lost when the bombs first hit.

“A story that grabs you from the first page and makes your heart go out to the Palestinians without pointing fingers at anyone.”

Guillermo Fesser, The Huffington Post “Let’s make this the next Kite Runner!” Ricciarda Barbieri, editor at Feltrinelli “If you enjoyed The Kite Runner or In the Shadow of the Banyan, you will want to read The Almond Tree“ Carol Fitzgerald, co-Founder/ President of The Book Report Network

• An accessible novel with a literary appeal that exposes the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the Palestinian point of view, which is both entertaining and thought provoking.

www.pontas-agency.com

Original language: English Published in 2012 348 pages www.thealmondtreebook.com

RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | Amsterdam Llibres CHINESE (Complex) | Faces CHINESE (Simplified) | Dauno Publishers DUTCH | Xander Uitgevers ENGLISH (South East Asia) | Fingerprint ENGLISH (UK) | Garnet Publishing GERMAN | Kurger/Fischer Verlag HUNGARIAN | Europa Kiadó ITALIAN | Feltrinelli NORWEGIAN | Schibsted Forlag PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Grupo Récord POLISH | Wydawnictwo Sine Qua Non SLOVAK | Ikar SPANISH (World) | Ediciones B TURKISH | Pegasus Yayinlari URDU | Zaryoun Matbooat

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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Terese Cristiansson Terese Cristiansson (1974) has worked as a journalist since 1998. She currently lives between Nairobi and Istanbul, where she works for Expressen, TV4, Dagens Industri and Fokus. She was stationed previously in Afghanistan and her professional focus has always been on women and children in conflict. She has reported from Iraq, Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Gaza, Mali and Somalia. Before being a war correspondent, she was a crime reporter.

The Girl Without a Face On the 7th September of 2013 an American drone hit the car that 4-yearold Aisha and her family were travelling in. Everyone died except Aisha.

After receiving treatment in a French military hospital in Kabul, Aisha suddenly goes missing. Not even Aisha’s relatives were told what had happened.

Expressen’s foreing correspondent Terese Cristiansson, on assignment in Afghanistan during that time, was interviewing a city hospital doctor about the people he had treated: dismembered policemn, children with gunshot wounds from battle crossfire and women who had died in childbirth. “We had another case here. She came in a couple of weeks ago. A little girl who had lost her face in a drone strike. It was a very unusual case. I’ll never forget it.”

Original language: Swedish Original title: Flickan utan ansikte To be published in 2016 RIGHTS SOLD SWEDISH | Natur och Kultur

After many phone calls and emails, Cristiansson found out that Aisha was in a hospital in Washington, under the responsability of the relief organization Solace. The news were received with joy and astonishment

by Aisha’s relatives, who had never been informed about Aisha’s condition. However, Solace refused to comment further: “They probably don’t want her to become a poster girl for drone repercussions”, the family said.

The Girl Without a Face (provisional title) will be written in the next 6-12 months and delivered in 2015 to Natur och Kultur, who pre-empted the rights after reading about the story in the press. It is a devastating yet powerful and urgent human interest story which raises the debate on the ethics behind the use of drones by the US army and the terrible socalled collateral effects of drone strikes.

• An important book that shows a side to the war on terrorism that the US does not want the world to see.

• Written by one of Sweden’s top war correspondents.

• The article was one of the most read articles of the week when it was published and had a huge impact on readers.

www.pontas-agency.com

© Peter I Chang

Mitch Cullin Mitch Cullin is the author of six books, including the novel Tideland, the film adaptation of which was directed by Terry Gilliam, and the novelin-verse, Branches. He lives in California’s San Gabriel Valley, and as a teenager was featured in USA Today in 1984 as one of the foremost Holmes fans in the world.

A Slight Trick of the Mind It is 1947, and the long-retired Sherlock Holmes, now 93, lives in a remote Sussex farmhouse with his housekeeper and her young son. He tends to his bees, writes in his journal, and grapples with the diminishing powers of his mind.

Original language: English Published in 2005 (USA) and 2014 (UK & Commonwealth) 272 pages

But in the twilight of his life, as people continue to look to him for answers, Holmes revisits a case that may provide him with answers of his own to questions he didn’t even know he was askingabout life, about love, and about the limits of the mind’s ability to know.

RIGHTS SOLD

Soon to be a major film (“Mr. Holmes”) starring Ian McKellen and Laura Linney, directed by Oscar-winning Bill Condon (“Gods and Monsters”), with screenplay by Jeffrey Hatcher (“The Duchess”).

“(A) touching picture of a once-great man now in old age, his powers declining, his beliefs - his world - crumbling. For all his genius, he realizes, the one thing he has never understood is love.”

The New York Times “This is a lovely, tenderhearted book, full of reserve, good manners, elegance of feeling. It’s what a novel should be. You don’t read it to be improved but for the plain joy of seeing what the language can do in the hands of an affectionate, very accomplished writer.” The Washington Post

BULGARIAN | Intense (Locus) CHINESE (Complex) | China Times CHINESE (Simplified) | Shanghai 99 CZECH | Euromedia ENGLISH (US & Canada) | Nan Talese Books ENGLISH (UK & Commonwealth) | Canongate FRENCH | Naïve Livres HUNGARIAN | Agave INDONESIA | Phoenix (UFUK) ITAIAN | Neri Pozza JAPANESE | Kadokawa Shoten KOREAN | Minumsa MARATHI | Saraswati PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Intrinseca RUSSIAN | Azbooka-Atticus SERBIAN | Vulkan SPANISH | Roca THAI | Amarin TURKISH Labirent Yayinlari

“Few non-canonical Holmes stories…are as original and surprising as Mitch Cullin’s A Slight Trick of the Mind.” Sunday Times

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Mainak Dhar Mainak Dhar is a cubicle dweller by day and author by night. His first `published’ work was a stapled collection of Maths solutions and poems (he figured nobody would pay for his poems alone) he sold to his classmates in Grade 7, and spent the proceeds on ice cream and comics. He was first published in a more conventional sense at the age of 18 and has since published ten books including the Amazon science fiction bestseller Vimana.

Alice in Deadland Civilization as we know it ended more than fifteen years ago, leaving as its legacy barren wastelands called the Deadland and a new terror for the humans who survived: hordes of undead Biters.

Fifteen year-old Alice has spent her entire life in the Deadland, her education consisting of how best to use guns and knives in the ongoing war for survival against the Biters. One day, Alice spots a Biter disappearing into a hole in the ground and follows it, in search of fabled underground Biter bases.

What Alice discovers there propels her into an action-packed adventure that changes her life and that of all humans in the Deadland forever. An adventure where she learns the terrible conspiracy behind the ruin of humanity, the truth behind the origin of the Biters, and the prophecy the mysterious Biter Queen believes Alice is destined to fulfill. • Alice in Deadland was released in November 2011 and quickly became an Amazon.com bestseller, selling more than 50,000 copies in its first three months.

Original language: English Published in 2011 230 pages www.mainakdhar.com RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (India) | Westland FRENCH | Pocket TURKISH | Elf Yayinlari Other titles in the series: Through the Killing Glass Off With Their Heads Hunting the Snark

TV & Film rights sold to Paper Airplane Productions

Zombiestan It began with stories of undead Taliban rampaging through Afghan villages, and faster than anyone could have anticipated, the darkness spreads through the world.

In a world laid waste by this new terror, four unlikely companions have been thrown together- a seventeen year old boy dealing with the loss of his family, a US Navy SEAL trying to get back home, an aging, lonely writer without anyone to live for, and a young girl trying to keep her three year old brother safe.

When they discover that the smallest amongst them holds the key to removing the scourge that threatens to destroy their world, they begin an epic journey to a rumoured safe zone high in the Himalayas. The journey pits them against their own worst fears and the most terrible dangers- both human and undead. www.pontas-agency.com

Original language: English Published in 2012 202 pages RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (India) | Westland ENGLISH Paperback (India) | Duckbill press AUDIO | Tantor

Pete Fromm A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Pete Fromm attended the University of Montana, earning a degree in Wildlife Biology with high honors in 1981. After working for several years as a river ranger in Grand Teton National Park, Pete turned to writing full time in 1990, including several Pushcart Prize nominations, and four Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book of the Year Awards.

If Not For This Maddy and Dalt meet in their early twenties while working on the Snake River, Wyoming, as river guides. Their romance takes off beneath the Grand Tetons, but priced out of the Jackson Hole area they’d worked so hard to bring people to, they set off on their own, starting Halfmoon Whitewater in Ashland, Oregon.

Young, wildly in love, they bull through the tight years, their growing frustration over the failure to get pregnant. Maddy’s mononucleosis is only a nuisance, the bouts of dizziness only annoying.

Finally, Dalt in Mongolia guiding Taimen fisherman, Maddy stays behind for further tests, discovering not only is she, at last, pregnant, but that the mono is not mono, but the beginning of multiple sclerosis.

Dalt comes home, the baby, named Attila after their favorite Mongol, thrives, and is followed by a girl, Izzy. Dalt turns to carpentry for the health benefits they need, and Maddy too leaves the rivers, raising her children.

Original language: English To be published in 2014 227 pages

RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (World) | Red Hen Press FRENCH | Gallmeister

Through the following decades they treat the MS like any other obstacle that’s come their way, strengthened by it rather than diminished.

Beautifully written, subtle in its development of the years, the love that sees them through, If Not For This is a stunning love story, moving, heartbreaking, yet still just and funny. Driven always by Maddy’s pitch perfect voice--river guide, lover, mother--readers will live Maddy’s life with her and never forget her.

• A story of indomitable love set along the wild rivers of the American West, by the author of Indian Creek Chronicles and As Cool As I am.

“A rich, deeply felt book, so full of kindness and kind people that it’s an absolute phenomenon” Ron Carlson, author of The Signal “A terrific novel, poignant as hell, but feisty, funny and romantic, too. Pete Fromm is a powerful, lucid writer, a perfect guide to the unpredictable rivers and people of the interior West, to their deep channels and breathtaking turns” Jess Walter

www.pontas-agency.com

Susana Fortes

Susana Fortes (Pontevedra, Spain, 1959) graduated with a degree in American History from Universidad de Barcelona. Her works have been translated into 20 languages, and her name can be found as the winner or finalist of many prestigious prizes. With her first novel, Querido Corto Maltés, she won the 1994 Premio Nuevos Narradores. In 2001 she was a finalist in the Premio Primavera, given by Espasa for her novel Fronteras de arena. El amante albanés was declared finalist of the largest Spanish language literary award, the Premio Planeta, in 2003.

Love Is Not for Poets Madrid, 1935. A young American woman arrives at the student dorm, where the crème de la crème of the Republican intellectuals reunites. Real and fictional characters intersect in the city streets. The famous evenings at La Colina de los Chopos attracts artists, musicians, dandies, poets, careerists, dreamers and students from everywhere. This glamorous and translucent atmosphere suddenly explodes when the body of a student appears floating in a nearby canal.

Original title: El amor no es un verso libre Original language: Spanish Published in 2013 250 pages RIGHTS SOLD SPANISH | Suma de Letras/ Santillana

This will be also the beginning of an intense love story between the newly arrived American girl and a prestigious and skeptical teacher who placed his life at a difficult crossroads. A forbidden and passionate romance that runs parallel to the crime shadows. The protagonists are caught in a web of intrigues, scandals and secrets of state of first scale that may cost their lives.

“Susana Fortes novelizes the Spanish Bloomsbury.” Levante • 2014 pick by New Spanish Books • A great American-European love story set between the two world wars, with a background of politics and suspense • For readers who enjoyed The Paris Wife, by Paula McLain, Above All Things by Tanis Rideout, Rules of Civility, by Amor Towles or Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan.

• Loosely based on the true love affair between the Spanish poet and member of the “Generation of ‘27” Pedro Salinas and Katherine Whitmore, a young American professor from Kansas who inspired him to write some of the most beautiful love poems of contemporary Spanish literature.

www.pontas-agency.com

Other titles

by Susana Fortes:

Brandon Graham

An unrepentant Southerner by birth, Brandon Graham has lived in eight states and four countries, receiving three university degrees. He worked as a commercial pressman and an adjunct professor in Missouri and as a gallery director in Nebraska. He studied in Budapest Hungary and Dijon France, with a summer spent as a barman at Woolpack inn in Chilham, England. He eventually settled near Chicago where he studied visual and written narrative at Columbia College Center for Book and Paper Arts, graduating with his MFA in 2008.

Good for Nothing Good For Nothing follows the episodic escapades of Flip Mellis, an unemployed, newly obese and suicidal family man, who is reaching the apex of a middle-age tantrum. Exacerbated by plentiful personal flaws, including a self-fulfilling fatalism, and coinciding with a national economic crisis, Flip’s good intentions are tainted by his poor life skills and questionable rationalizations.

Original language: English Published in 2014 321 pages

RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (UK & Ireland) | Skyscraper

The result of which is a darkly humorous social satire that explores men’s attitudes toward work, love, family, women, sex, and consumer culture.

Tone, approachable language, pace, and absurd juxtapositions drive the story. Below the surface, an earnest exploration of the American male, his strengths and shortcomings, his inflated self-concept and his ignorant, self-hating abusiveness gives weight to the playfully circuitous and subversive story arc. The question is: are Flip’s best efforts enough to lead him to personal redemption and grace or will they merely lead to a futile, purely graceless and quixotic death spasm.

“Brandon Graham is a very funny, painfully observant, no-holds-barred American writer.

In Good for Nothing he shows us America now: out of work, out of shape, slightly suicidal but retaining a sharp sense of the absurd. This is a brilliant book. When times are really horrible it’s good to be able to laugh (especially at ourselves).” Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveller’s Wife “Enchanted by Good For Nothing: overlooked.” Stephen Fry “Keenly observant - funny, sensitive and charming at the same time!!” Caroline Tetschner, Amazon reviewer “The book could be the lovechild of Bill Bryson and Martin Amis.” Daily Mail “What a debut! The story made me laugh, cringe and think... and kept my full attention right to the last page.” Jean Bevier, Amazon

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Ayesha Harruna Attah Born to two Ghanaian journalists, Ayesha Harruna Attah grew up in Accra. At age 17, she moved to Massachusetts and studied Biochemistry at Mount Holyoke College. Feeling the tug of her right brain, she went on to pursue an MS in Journalism from Columbia University. In 2009, with a fellowship from Per Ankh Publishers and TrustAfrica, she published her first novel, Harmattan Rain, shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, Best First Book in 2010. Ayesha shuttles back and forth between Accra and Brooklyn.

Saturday’s Shadows A thin line exists between sanity and madness, learn the protagonists of Saturday’s Shadows, as they try to find and hold on to love in the volatile world of 1990s West Africa.

After a 17-year military dictatorship, the members of the middle class Avoka family lurch towards destruction as their country is trying to find its footing. The father, Theo, is recruited to write the memoirs of the dictator-turned-president whom he both loathes and reveres. Zahra, matriarch of the Avoka household, rekindles an affair with an old lover and barely keeps her family and sanity together. Theo and Zahra’s son Kojo has just started the boarding school of his dreams but finds out sometimes dreams should remain dreams. Their help, Atsu, a recent transplant from the village, struggles to understand big city living with all its temptations- money, men and lust- and a family in which the mother doesn’t posses a single domestic bone. The climate they live in is politically complex, a time so tenous the country could easily dip back into its military past.

Original language: English 250 pages To be published in 2014

RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (World) | World Editions DUTCH | De Geus

The multi-voiced novel not only paints a picture of these tumultous changes, but also shows that tenderness can persist even when everything else is being rent apart.

“Saturday’s Shadows shows ‘us how true Africans live in the 21st century’ and is ‘a departure from the traditional method of depicting literary Africans as folks who always lived in the past.’ It’s also ‘a study in the psychology of tyrants and how their rule destroys not only their subjects but themselves.’” Mohammed Nassehu-Ali (author of The Prophet of Zongo Street)

• Influenced by Naguib Mahfouz’s Palace Walk and William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Saturday’s Shadows allows its four characters to narrate how they will do almost anything to find themselves.

“Who says that there are no good authors coming from Ghana? Shut up! Have you read Ayesha Harruna Attah?” Ama Ata Aidoo, in BBC Africa World Service

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A. E. Hochschild A. E. Hochschild lives in London. Previously he was a journalist writing news and cultural features throughout Latin America. He has spent long stints in the Amazon and has sailed in the Arctic and Antarctic.

He has an MA in History from Trinity College, Dublin. Whilst at university, he travelled to Poland, whereupon he became friends with many of the characters in the pages of The Countess & the Bear.

He has adapted The Countess & the Bear as a film screenplay and is writing his second novel.

The Countess & The Bear The Countess & the Bear is set in a medieval hamlet in the Tatra Mountains, in the 1980s and during Poland’s last Communist Government.

Original language: English Manuscript 248 pages

Courting the daughter of the last owner of the village of Tarkowice, the newly arrived militiaman learns of the villagers’ ambitious plot to earn some much needed money.

bears in the forest.

Harking back to their grander old days, the plan involves re-establishing the estate of Tarkowice as a hunting destination for rich tourists from the West. Finally an eccentric Englishman is fooled into coming to shoot the non-existent

As the political situation worsens with the imposition of Martial Law, it is up to the love-struck and unlikely militiaman to outwit his fanatical superiors, as the great master plan goes dramatically wrong.

The Countess & The Bear is a quirky, funny story with a loveable ensemble of colourful characters, with whom the reader becomes very attached.

“Hochschild has a unique understanding of these people, and of the pathos in their tiny but all-important disasters. He writes with the hilarious sadness that is at the heart of the best comedy.” Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey

• In tone, The Countess & the Bear it is a peculiar mixture of The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. It also has the feel of Wes Anderson’s film The Grand Budapest Hotel.

www.pontas-agency.com

© Ester Meerman

Sándor Jászberényi Sándor Jászberényi (Sopron, Hungary, 1980) works as a correspondent in conflict zones for several Hungarian newspapers and currently lives in Cairo, Egypt. He studied literature, philosophy and Arabic at the university ELTE, in Budapest. He has covered the Darfur crisis, the cast lead operation in the Gaza Strip, the Huthi uprising in Yemen and the Egyptian and the Libyan revolutions. His stories have been published in English in Pilvax and BODY magazines.

The Devil is a Black Dog

And Other Stories From the Middle East and Beyond The collection includes 14 stories about war, seen from many different perspectives, but always with the individual at the centre: the mother, the soldier, the martyr, the religious man, the journalist, etc.. Together, they form a kaleidoscope of mini-worlds, of moments, of decisions… And all together put a face, an emotion, a thought, behind humans confronted by war and conflict.

Original language: Hungarian 130 pages Published in 2013 RIGHTS SOLD ENLISH (US) | New Europe Books HUNGARIAN | Kallingram ITALIAN | Edizioni Anfora

Sándor is currently based in Cairo and his writing comes from his experiences covering all the Arab revolutions and the conflicts in the Middle East during the last few years. From Benghazi to Yemen, he has been on the very front line of danger, approaching journalism from a extreme point of view. In times of the newspaper and media crisis, The Devil is a Black Dog and Other Stories is a perfect example of how to give meaning to journalism today, how it can help us interpret the world, what journalism in capital letters – when it becomes literature - means.

“Fiercely precise, tight and violent – Jászberényi’s book is beautifully constructed, tough and exciting prose.” György Dragomán, Hungarian author of The White King, translated into 28 languages “Jászberényi is brutally frank in his stories of how the civil strife–wracked Africa and Middle East have not only demeaned the value of life and death but also killed the sensitivity of reporters and photographers to these horrors even while they seek to provoke the moral outrage of the outside world.” David Ottaway, former Washington Post correspondent in Africa and the Middle East

• A selection of stories, half way between fiction and non fiction, that resonate with the works of Tim O’Brien, Kevin Powers and John Lee Anderson.

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Sara Lövestam Sara Lövestam, born 1980, teaches Swedish to immigrants and is a freelance journalist. In spring 2009 she won the debutant novel-prize Bok-SM for her first novel, Udda (Different). Her second novel, I havet finns så många fiskar (In the Deep Blue Sea) was received in 2011 with wonderful praise and sold 20,000 hard cover copies. Her third novel, Tillbaka till henne (Back to Her), is an ambitious book about the history of the women’s right to vote. Sara is a new, brave literary voice with a steady group of staunch readers, growing with each new novel.

Heart of Jazz What can a bullied teenager learn from an old man spending his days in a retirement home?

For example, she’ll learn that it ain’t got a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.

For Steffi, every day at school is a nightmare.

Her biggest bully is the popular girl, Karro, who cannot rest one day without telling Steffi what a disgusting nobody she is, and noone is strong or mature enough to argue with her. Steffi’s way to survive is through music. She plays the bass and listens to music as soon as she gets a chance.

But running on her mp3 player are not the usual teen idols. It’s Povel Ramel, the quirky jazz musician who got his first taste of fame in the 1940’s. His songs are happy, funny, full of play with words and no hatred. They take away the pain.

“Poetic, well written, insightful and encouraging, this unusual novel underscores what anyone with odd and rewarding interests already knows: nerds have the richest lives.”

“It’s novel for 15 year olds as much as it is for those who are 90, and all the ages in between. So talented and so liberating. The story becomes rhythmic and alive with music. Just like a jazz tune, it is melancholic and exuberant.”

Original title: Hjarta av jazz Original language: Swedish 250 pages Published in 2013 RIGHTS SOLD GERMAN | Rowohlt SPANISH | Suma de Letras SWEDISH | Piratförlaget English sample available

Other titles by Sara Lövestam: Different (2009) In The Deep Blue Sea (2011) Back To Her (2012)

“Heart of Jazz is a moving story about growing up, about how strong love of music can be, and about friendship over age limits.

Feel-good at its best.”

www.pontas-agency.com

© Carles Mercader

Gabi Martínez Gabi Martínez (Barcelona, 1971) is one the most outstanding and groundbreaking authors in travel literature. He published Diablo de Timanfaya (2000), Anticreta (2000) and Los mares de Wang (2008), the latter being chosen as one of the best non-fiction books in 2008 and #1 in the Condé Nast Traveller list. With his book of essays Una España inesperada (2005) he became a reference of the new literary journalism in Spanish.

Gone A travel writer from new New Zealand has disappeared after looking for traces of the moa, an animal that has been extinct for centuries. To better understand the life of the disappeared and the reason why he undertook this utopian expedition, a young journalist decides to interview different people who once traveled with him.

The writer´s ex-wife discusses their travel through Italy together. The translator who helped him move to China refutes much of what his client wrote and says he regrets having met him. A Portuguese friend recalls how frightened the writer was of motorcycles and of the days they shared together when she used to work as a stripper. The young journalist interviews many people, including a filmmaker who crossed the Nile with him, his guide in Australia, his current partner…

Original title: Voy Original language: Spanish 250 pages Published in 2014 RIGHTS SOLD SPANISH | Alfaguara

• Reminiscent of J.M. Coetzee´s formula and brimming with Walt Whitman´s joie de vivre, Gabi Martínez has written a novel about his own profession in which he debunks the romantic myth of the Great Travelers.

The True Story of the Man Who Went in Search for the Yeti On 2nd August 2002, Jordi Magraner, a Spanish zoologist was found dead in his house on the Bumburet Valley (Pakistan). Jordi had arrived in Pakistan in 1988 in search of new animal species, though his main (and confidential) objective in the mission was to find traces of human-like feet: he dreamed of finding the Yeti, also known as Bigfoot, or Barmanu in hindu.

During more than ten years Jordi travelled all over Northern Pakistan and the Northeast of Afghanistan within the framework of his scientific investigation.

A few years after Jordi Magraner’s assassination, journalist and writer Gabi Martínez echoes his story and travels to Pakistan himself in order to talk directly to the protagonists, diving into the investigation of the death of the Spanish zoologist, still unsolved, with the collaboration of Magraner’s family. Sólo para gigantes is the result of his work. www.pontas-agency.com

Original title: Sólo para gigantes Original language: Spanish Published in 2011 408 pages

RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | Ara Libres FRENCH | Autrement PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Rocco SPANISH | Alfaguara

Film rights sold Distinto Films in coproduction with Alea Films

© 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

Maribel Medina Maribel Medina (Pamplona, 1969) studied Geography and History and, after living in India and Nepal with her family for a few years, started working in international aid. In 2011 she founded the NGO Women’s Time, which currently has a number of projects in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic). Sangre de barro (Still Blood) is her first novel.

Still Blood One Interpol officer with a mysterious past, and an even more mysterious sex life. One young male athlete fighting to fulfill his Olympic dream, at any cost. Six strange ‘sudden deaths’ in the same elite training centre in Switzerland. One forensic doctor who refuses to give up, professionally, and in life. The international search to unveil largest scandal in the history of sports begins…

Original title: Sangre de barro Original language: Spanish Published in 2014 390 pages RIGHTS SOLD SPANISH | Maeva POLISH | Sonia Draga

Thomas Connors is an Irish Interpol profiler based in Lyon. He helps international Governments share their criminal databases and frequents private sex clubs with his girlfriend. Janik is a young Swiss athlete competing for his dream to win a medal at the Olympics in honor of his dead father.

Within months, Una and Irina, two young Russian athletes from the same centre, suffer a mysterious sudden death. Thomas and Janik are both connected to them for different reasons: Una is the daughter of Thomas’s first girlfriend, and Irina was one of Janik’s closest friends and his secret love. Laura Terroux, the forensic doctor, teams up with Thomas and they both begin an investigation to try and track down the drug mafias that have caused these deaths and other similar ones before them. The search rapidly turns more and more dangerous, and more and more international.

• A page-turning thriller about the mafia and the international networks behind the commerce of performance enhancing drugs and blood doping among elite athletes.

• Set in France, Switzerland, Ireland, South Korea and NY, Still Blood is a gripping and entertaining read of timely interest. A jaw-dropping portrait of the current elite sports industry with an impossible-to-put-down plot.

• For fans of John Verdon, Katherine Neville, Patricia Cornwell, Camilla Läckberg and John LeCarré.

“A very well-written, addictive and very brave novel.” El Periódico, one of Spain’s largest newspapers

www.pontas-agency.com

Jason Eric Miller Jason Eric Miller grew up in the mountains of Colorado and Montana.

Educated at the University of Montana, the University of Southern California, and the University of Denver, he has been a professor of Creative Writing since 2000. The protagonists of Miller´s work typically set out on a journey during a time of intense crisis, in hopes of discovering some better place over the horizon. These characters are quintessentially American, exploring, updating and subverting the myth of Manifest Destiny.

Mistress He’s not a bad guy—a loving father with a real compassion for the welfare of animals. It’s just that, no matter what he tells himself about what we really wants and who he really is, his home life in the suburbs is not quite enough.

It’s just that his chosen mistress is no longer willing. It’s just that when he decides to keep her as a prisoner in a cabin deep in the snowbound mountains, he hasn’t accounted for the toll a life divided takes on the body and the mind.

Original language: English Manuscript 215 pages

Also by Jason Eric Miller: Decomposition (2006)

A story of self discovery, Mistress is follows a suburban family man who has strayed from his marriage into the heart of obsession. Keeping his object of desire as a prisoner in a snowbound forest cabin, he struggles to divide himself between two worlds.

It isn’t that he’s a bad guy. It’s just that the secret workings of his true heart may out at a terrible cost.

• Décomposition, his previous novel, was published in English, French, Spanish and Italian: “The novel draws you in and is a roller coaster ride to the last page. It reminded me of an adult Robert Cormier novel or David Lynch flick - interesting, intense, bizarre and deeply illustrative that each person’s reality is a proprietary thing.”

Bone World Written by twelve year old Dane Miller Hass and his father, novelist Jason Eric Miller, Bone World is a coming-to-terms story told in a series of letters written from a young survivor of an apocalyptic event to a girl he believes to be alive, too. These letters chronicle his journey from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, where he will collect the bones of his father to bury beside the bones of his mother. In recounting his story along the way, the boy links the worldwide catastrophe to the tragedies of his personal life before the apocalypse: his parents’ divorce, difficult relationships at school, the terrible and mysterious disappearance of his elder brother.

Original language: English Manuscript 143 pages

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Miquel Molina Miquel Molina Muntané (Barcelona, 1963) has been living immersed in the world of communication for almost thirty years, since he first started working as a journalist in an editorial office. He is now deputy director of La Vanguardia, a leading Spanish newspaper. His first novel, Una flor del mal, is a result of his other hobbies: inspecting the faces of the people represented in paintings and reconstructing the biographies of these models that are halfway between reality and an idealized character created by the painter.

The Pale Woman from Barcelona Gustave Flaubert, without wanting to, left an unanswered question when he wrote that his Emma Bovary looked like “the pale woman of Barcelona”. To whom was he referring to? A real woman? A popular phrase? To a model in a painting?

Original title: Una flor del mal Original language: Spanish Published in 2014 250 pages

Did a Catalan Emma Bovary really exist? How was she? Where was she buried?

SPANISH | Destino / Grupo Planeta

RIGHTS SOLD

A century and a half has gone by since Flaubert described his heroine. The literature lecturer Guillermo Jiménez starts seeking for the answer somewhere in the triangle formed by the cities of Philadelphia, Lyon and Barcelona.

The appearance of a Nazi-sacked painting in a mansion in the Catalan capital will only increase his excitement to find out who she was. Gustave Courbet, Baudelaire, 19th century ladies addicted to opium, Herman Göering and an enigmatic woman of our time constitute this intriguing combination of fiction and real facts.

• The Girl With the Pearl Earing for heart-broken fans of Madame Bovary and its timeless protagonist.

“A mysterious and elegant story I read with pleasure” Eduardo Mendoza, Premio Planeta winner and author of La ciudad de los prodigios “A novel about desire and obsession, about history and art, about truth and fiction.”

Culturamas “An art mystery that becomes at the same time a passionate story of personal search.

Miquel Molina links skilfully the investigation about Courbet’s painting with an uncommon triangle marked by secrets, desire and generational gap.” Sergio VilaSanJuán, journalist and writer “In his first novel, Molina has done a great exercise of honesty with himself and also with the reader. He has turned his obsessions and phobias into literature, taking a lot of care in the writing and the selection of characters and stories.” Care Santos, writer www.pontas-agency.com

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…

Original language: French Published in 2014 184 pages

RIGHTS SOLD FRENCH | Ed. Métailié ENGLISH (North America) | Deep Vellum Publishing

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.

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

Carl Nixon Carl Nixon was born in Christchurch in 1967 and is one of New Zealand’s leading authors. He has written three novels, a short story collection and numerous theatrical scripts. His books have regularly appeared on the top selling New Zealand fiction lists and have been listed for international awards, including the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Best First Book (South East Asia and Australasia region), and the Dublin International IMPAC Awards. His last novel, The Virgin and the Whale, has been optioned for film by South Pacific Films.

Settler’s Creek Box Saxton just wants to bury, Mark, his stepson.

What happens, though, when the boy’s biological father, a Maori leader, unexpectedly turns up in the days before the funeral and forcibly takes the boy’s body? According to Maori custom the boy should be buried in the tribe’s ancestral cemetery at the small coastal town of Kaipuna. According to the law there is very little Box can do. With no plan and little hope, Box gets in his old truck and drives north, desperate and heartbroken.

Original language: English Published in 2010 336 pages RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (ANZ) | Random House New Zealand GERMAN | Weilde Verlag

Settler’s Creek examines the claims of both indigenous peoples and more recent settlers to have a spiritual link to the land. The book explores with depth and compassion some of the many issues of race and culture which New Zealand, like Australia, faces.

“Brave, bold and unflinching, one of the best novels to come out of New Zealand. It’s not only a gripping, brutal thriller but also a dissection of a country and its culture. It’s the kind of book that gets you run out of town.” Witi Ihimaera

Rocking Horse Road Lucy Asher’s murder makes a huge impact on all those who live along Rocking Horse Road, which runs through the Spit, a long ‘finger of bone-dry sand’ between the ocean and the estuary. It’s an event that for one hot summer brings together a group of fifteen-year-old boys and then keeps them linked for the rest of their lives.

Evolving from Nixon’s celebrated short story, this powerful novel is much more than an intelligently evoked murder mystery. It’s a book about coming of age and loss of innocence, not just for the characters but for New Zealand, as the country turns upon itself during the 1981 Springbok Tour. It examines how early events can influence the rest of our lives, and probes ideas of community, collective memory and story-telling. www.pontas-agency.com

Original language: English Published in 2007 240 pages

RIGHTS SOLD ENGLISH (ANZ) | Random House New Zealand CHINESE (Complex) | Crown GERMAN | Weilde Verlag

© 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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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) won 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 Prize for Best Book.

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 discoverytransforming his life entirely.

Original language: English 250 pages To be published in 2014

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.

ENGLISH (Indian subcontinent) | Random House India

RIGHTS SOLD

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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Dolores Redondo

Dolores Redondo (Donostia-San Sebastián, 1969) studied Law and Culinary Arts and worked in business for a few years. The Baztán trilogy a gripping landscape series set in the Basque Pyrenees, has sold over 500,000 copies in Spain and has been translated into 28 languages. Film rights have been optioned by Nadcon Films (joint venture of German producer Peter Nadermann and Constantin Film).

The Baztán Trilogy The Invisible Guardian starts with the discovery of the naked body of a teenager, sinisterly placed on the margins of the River Baztán, one of the magical places in the Basque Country and Navarra. Almost twenty four hours after the discovery a connection is made with the murder of another girl a month before. The homicide inspector, Amaia Salazar, will be appointed to direct an investigation that will take her back to the place where she was born and from where she always wanted to escape. Salazar is fighting on two fronts: the professional, where she must retain focus on the investigation of a series of murders which have caused great social unrest, and the personal front, her relationship with her family deeply emotional and complex.

The Invisible Guardian is followed by Legacy of the Bones (published in Spain already) and Offering to the Storm (to be published in 2014).

“A novel about the fear of returning to fear.” La Vanguardia “It reminds us of Johan Theorin and Maurizio de Giovanni, of the short stories by Tana French or of Val McDermid. Like all of them, The Invisible Guardian is a more sophisticated kind of book, more elaborated than the conventional crime novel.” El Periódico “I was very surprized by it, I really loved it. I strongly recommend it.” María Dueñas, author of The Time in Between “It’s the basajaun, the other main character, the mysterious element and the original « soul » of the book : man vs the bestiality of crime, ancestral legends vs modern investigation techniques, family traumas vs dark beliefs.” L’Express “Dolores Redondo has broken the traditional mold of the publishing industry.” David Morán, ABC “A landscape thriller. And what a landscape it is!” Page des Libraires Film rights sold of the entire “Trilogy of Baztan” to NadCon Films (joint venture of German producer Peter Nadermann and Constantin Film)

Original language: Spanish www.doloresredondomeira.com RIGHTS SOLD SPANISH | Destino / Grupo Planeta BASQUE | Erein BULGARIAN | Colibri CATALAN | Columna / Grupo Planeta COMPLEX CHINESE | Global CZECH | Nakladatelství Panteon DANISH | HR Ferdinand DUTCH | Cargo/De Bezige Bij ENGLISH (UK) | Blue Door/ Harper Collins ENGLISH (ANZ) | Harper Collins Australia ENGLISH (US) | Atria/Simon & Schuster FINNISH | Gummerus FRENCH | Mercure Noir GALICIAN | Xerais GERMAN | Bastei Lübbe GREEK | Medusa HEBREW | Kinneret-Zmora HUNGARIAN | Trivium Kiadó ITALIAN | Salani / Mauri Spagnol JAPANESE | Hayakawa KOREAN (South Korea) | Book 21 NORWEGIAN | Cappelen Damm POLISH | Czarna Owca PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Record PORTUGUESE (Portugal) | Divina Comédia Editores RUSSIAN | Hemiro/Family Leisure Club SERBIAN | Laguna SLOVAK | Ikar TURKISH | Marti Yayinlari Graphic novel adaptation | Planeta DeAgostini Cómics 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

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Other titles by Cristina Sánchez Andrade

James Terry Born in 1970, James Terry grew up in a small New Mexico bordertown, earned his BA in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and worked in film and television production in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to Dublin, Ireland, where he lived for six years, teaching English. Since leaving Dublin he has lived and worked in New Delhi, India and Edmonton, Canada. He currently lives in Liverpool, UK, with his wife and son.

The Territory Something is rotten in Shakespeare. Abigail Jonson, lured to this eponymous frontier mining town by the fanciful letters of her husbandto-be, finds herself alone in a desolate world of lonely men. Already fraught with tension, her marriage to Henry, the old saloon keeper, is further complicated by Henry’s impotence. When Henry discovers that she has seduced the teenage bank teller, he exploits the situation for his own gratification. This sets in motion the events that will challenge Abigail’s endurance and self-respect for the remainder of the novel. The climax comes when she stages a production of As You Like It, using a group of men to play the parts of women. This leads to the demise of the town and Abigail’s liberation from the forces that have bound her there.

Original language: English Manuscript 250 pages

Like a Shakespeare play, The Territory is structured episodically, with multiple subplots unfolding simultaneously, each segment focussing on the concerns of one of the novel’s five central characters. The novel also makes a playful and symbolic use of the bard’s universe woven into the novel. The town of Shakespeare is akin to Prospero’s island, a kind of imaginary space with its own strange laws, cut off from the real world.

www.pontas-agency.com

Olivier Truc Journalist since 1986, Olivier Truc has been based in Stockholm since 1994.

He is currently correspondent for Le Monde and Le Point, worked also for Libération. He also produces tv-documentaries. Olivier Truc has already written two books L’Imposteur (2006, Calmann-Lévy), and Dykaren som exploderade (2008, Norstedts). Both books are based on personal stories, in-depth portraits and interviews. Le dernier lapon however has been his biggest-selling novel so far with 100,000 copies sold in French and 14 translations.

Forty Days Without Shadow In Kautokeinko, a small village in the northern extreme of Scandianvia, the police try to solve a murder and the theft of an ancient drum amidst raising tensions between members of the Arctic-based Sami religion and fundamentalists opposed to their beliefs. The vast white wilderness of Lapland has become a battlefield, where anger, greed and suspicion reign. Klemet Nango and Nina Nansen are members of the P9 patrol of the Reindeer Police, a specialized brigade accustomed to most of the natural and manmade challenges in the region. But not everyone in Kautokeino wants to see their investigation move forward…

• Prix Salon du Polar de Montigny - Best Crime novel in French • Prix Inter polar du festival polar de Reims • Prix des Lecteurs Plume Libre 2013, plume de bronze dans la catégorie nouvelle plume polar, thriller francophone “Set in Northern Norway, a fascinating thriller that makes you shudder and offers the opportunity to discover a mysterious land, the Sami people land.” La Reppublica “This novel is a homage to the recovery of identity.” La Vanguardia

The Wolf Strait Hammerfest, on the coast of Norwegian Lapland, has become over the last years the base of the oil and gas development in the European Arctic. It is now the period of the longest days of the year. But clear days do not mean a peaceful atmosphere. Several accidental deaths sadden the neighborhood of the small town.

First a reindeer breeder, then the mayor of Hammerfest, then several oil companies managers, but also workers, a doctor...

The Wolf Strait tells about a centenarian culture which fights for its survival in a region where development gives priority to the collective interest over the personal fates, playing the benefit of some against the desires of others. www.pontas-agency.com

Original title: Le dernier lapon Original language: French Published in 2013 456 pages RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | Columna CZECH | Panteon DANISH | Modtryk DUTCH | Signatuur ENGLISH | Trapdoor/Little Brown (UK), Grand Central/ Little Brown (USA) FINNISH | Siltala FRENCH | Éditions Métailié GERMAN | Droemer Knaur ITALIAN | Marsilio NORWEGIAN | Cappelen Damm POLISH | Czarna Owca PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Alaúde/Tordesilhas SLOVAK | Pantheon SPANISH | Destino (Planeta) SWEDISH | Piratforlag English translation available Film rights sold to Nice Drama Entertainment Righs held in conjunction with the Hedlund Agency Original title: Le détroit du loup Original language: French Published in 2014 351 pages RIGHTS SOLD DANISH | Modtryk FRENCH | Éditions Métailié ITALIAN | Marsilio PORTUGUESE (Brazil) | Editora Aláude SPANISH | Destino / Grupo Planeta

Emmanuelle Urien Born in the seventies in Anjou, Emmanuelle Urien is a tri-lingual translator and writer. She has specialized since 2005 in the genre she prefers the most, thriller, of which she has already written three volumes. She has also written fiction for Radio France before publishing her first novel Tu devrais voir quelqu’un (Gallimard 2009). All this noir does not impede her ability to see in red, especially in her last works. L’Art difficile de reter assise sur une balançoire which has been described as was longlisted for the Prix Maisons de Presse 2013.

The Delicate Art To Remain Seated on a Seesaw Marriage is like a seesaw: if one side steps away, the other gets shot straight into the air... What would you do if your ideal life suddenly turned upsidedown? If you found out your husband was cheating on you with your best friend? Is it possible to feel dead and alive at the same time, like Shrödiger’s cat?

After her husband Yann leaves her for her best friend, Pauline finds herself suffering from a disease common to such traumatic circumstances: she feels both alive and dead, though she admits there is no point in jumping out of a first-floor window and no sense in hating a rival who, ironically, has just died.

An unreliable narrator of her own drama, Pauline is an extravagant mourner, dragging the reader into the comical excesses caused by her sad, trivial situation. As her three children would rather have her alive, she struggles to keep hate and grief at bay. With the support of her psychiatrist mother, Pauline comes up with a plan: to remove the source of her trouble, she will declare her ex-husband dead – although the deceased regularly phones the children. Things go awry, however, when Yann actually disappears.

Original title: L´Art difficile de rester assise sur une balançoire Original language: French 250 pages

RIGHTS SOLD CATALAN | Angle Editorial FRENCH | Éditions Denoël ITALIAN | Newton & Compton SPANISH | Grijalbo/Penguin Random House TURKISH | Dogan Kitap English sample available

“Urien offers us a novel full of hope and optimism. (..) This fun and effective read, impregnated by a redemptive self-assertiveness, constitutes a beautiful blow of fresh air in this never-ending winter.” Ça Depend des Jours

• Long-listed for the Prix des Maisons de Presse 2013 • A novel that addresses relationships, abandon, loss and identity through an entertaining and engaging plot • A novel that moves between the trivial and the deep, the humorous and the philosophical

www.pontas-agency.com

Teresa Viejo Teresa Viejo is a well-known Spanish journalist. She has hosted many shows for the main Spanish televisions. Her career took a new turn and became a part of the Spanish media history when she accepted the direction of the weekly magazine Interviú, as the first woman ever directing such magazine. In 2001 she was appointed ambassador of UNICEF because of her solidarity work.

As Time Comes Back Beautiful young Aurora leaves behind a tumultuous Spain (and tormented past) to move to Mexico with the wealthy family she works for as a maid. Little does she know she will be reborn as Vera Velier, a film-reel star.

However fate will make her choose between future and past, between returning to the profound love of her teenage years, when the notion of becoming an actress was only a dream, or forever surrendering to her starry-eyed ambitions.

As Time Comes Back is a historical melodrama with touches of mystery set in the first half of the 20th century (1936 to 1944), weaving together the film world, Spain and Mexico. Beautiful young Aurora leaves behind a tumultuous Spain (and a tormented past) to move to Mexico with the wealthy family she works for as a maid. Little does she know that she will be reborn as the film star Vera Velier. Fate will make her choose between past and future, between regaining the love of her teenage years, when her dreams of becoming an actress were little more than fantasy, or surrendering to her starry-eyed ambitions.

Original title: Que el tiempo nos encuentre Original language: Spanish Published in 2013 250 pages

RIGHTS SOLD SPANISH | Martínez Roca/Grupo Planeta

Film & TV rights sold to Veralia

• Set during the golden Holywood years of Mexico -40’s and 50’s – between the tropical Veracruz and Mexico DF, the capital of filmstars of the time.

• A story that will fascinate lovers of good b/w cinema, of impossible love affairs, family sagas, second chances, and those stories that take us to distant lands, exotic and sensual, with a bolero tun playing in the background.

“A masterpiece, fascinating…” Correo Gallego “As in all good stories, the writing undermines the soul of the characters .Alongside the exoticism of the setting, this story of breakouts and secrets represents the consolidation of the journalist in the intricate world of fiction, where he debuted with THE MEMORY OF WATER in 2009, a successful book that even reached the TV as a mini-series.” La Razón “A literary trip to the Golden Age of the Latin Hollywood.” El Periódico

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Pontas Authors Susan Abulhawa Maria Àngels Anglada Alfonso Armada Federico Axat Lluís-Anton Baulenas Stéphanie Benson Alfredo de Braganza Blanca Busquets Milena Busquets Jordi Cabré Belén Carmona Maite Carranza Roc Casagran David Castillo 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 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

www.pontas-agency.com

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.

www.pontas-agency.com