RIGHTS LIST
Frankfurt
2016
SvH Literarische Agentur
was founded in 2005. We are based in Berlin and represent authors worldwide as well as Spanish
agencies and publishers in German and Dutch language territories. Our catalogue includes fiction
and non-fiction, adult, youth and children’s books.
www.saskiavonhoegen.de
SvH Literarische Agentur
Stolzenfelsstrasse 1A
10318 Berlin
Germany
Phone: +49 30 48811267
Email: [email protected]
www.saskiavonhoegen.de
Authors
We represent the following authors:
Esther Andradi
Linda Carlino
Marion Dick
Carolin Duprée
Martina Frey
Joke Hermsen
Ricardo Hirschfeldt
Antje Joel
Ute Kettenburg
Cesar Narganes
Ángela Pradelli
Raúl Riebenbaur
Ricardo Riera
2
Clients
We represent the following literary agencies and publishing houses for
German and Dutch translation rights:
CBQ agencia literaria
www.agencialiterariacbq.com
Sandra Bruna agencia literaria
www.sandrabruna.com
DOS PASSOS agencia literaria
www.dospassos.es
Editorial Pre-Textos
www.pre-textos.com
Thinking Heads
www.thinkingheads.com
3
INDEX
FICTION GENERAL FICTION ............. 6
Víctor Amela .............................................. 6
Paloma Bravo ............................................. 6
Linda & Charles Carlino .......................... 7
David Cantero ............................................ 8
Inma Chacón .............................................. 8
Carmen Gallardo ....................................... 9
Begoña García Carteron ........................... 9
Natalio Grueso ......................................... 10
Nadia Guhlam & Javier Diéguez............ 11
Nadia Guhlam & Agnès Rotger.............. 11
Daniel Jimenez ......................................... 11
Gemma Lienas ......................................... 12
Mari Carmen Martínez Tomás .............. 12
Francesc Miralles ..................................... 13
Francesc Miralles & Alex Rovira ........... 14
Francesc Miralles & Care Santos ........... 14
Alejandro Palomas................................... 15
Malenka Ramos ....................................... 16
Marta del Riego Ante .............................. 16
Glòria Sabaté ............................................ 17
Paloma Sánchez-Garnica ........................ 17
Care Santos............................................... 18
Sílvia Soler ................................................ 19
Sílvia Tarragó........................................... 20
Coia Valls .................................................. 20
Rafael Vídac ............................................. 21
THRILLER & CRIME ........................... 22
Santi Baró ................................................. 22
Sebastià Bennassar .................................. 22
Carmen Conde ......................................... 23
Horacio Convertini .................................. 23
Empar Fernández .................................... 24
Fernando Goitia ....................................... 24
Miguel Ángel Molfino .............................. 25
Oriol Nolis ................................................ 25
Pablo del Palacio ...................................... 26
David Vicente ........................................... 26
LITERARY FICTION ............................ 27
Selva Almada ........................................... 27
María Teresa Andruetto ......................... 28
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara ..................... 29
Fabian Casas ............................................ 30
Inés Garland ............................................ 30
Vera Giaconi ............................................ 31
Javier González-Cotta ............................. 32
Ariana Harwicz........................................ 32
Iosi Havilio ............................................... 33
Joke Hermsen .......................................... 34
Mario Levrero (Uruguay 1940-2004), ... 35
Luisgé Martín .......................................... 36
Ronaldo Menéndez .................................. 36
Clara Obligado ........................................ 37
Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga .............................. 37
Ángela Pradelli ........................................ 38
Cristina Redondo Alonso ........................ 39
Yolanda Reyes.......................................... 39
Giovanna Rivero ...................................... 40
José Andrés Rojo ..................................... 40
Jesús Ruiz Mantilla ................................. 41
Fedosy Santaella ...................................... 41
Javier Vásconez ....................................... 42
Aurora Venturini ..................................... 42
Pablo Yoiris .............................................. 43
NON-FICTION ........................................ 44
ESSAYS / HISTORICAL & POLITICAL
NON-FICTION ........................................ 44
Selva Almada ........................................... 44
Esther Andradi ........................................ 44
María Teresa Andruetto ......................... 45
4
Joke Hermsen ........................................... 45
Jesús Ruiz Mantilla.................................. 46
GENERAL NON-FICTION / SELFHELP GUIDES ........................................ 47
Bom & Bon ............................................... 47
Pancho Campo ......................................... 48
Montse Domènech.................................... 48
Mónica Esgueva ....................................... 49
Eduard Estivill ......................................... 49
Dra. Montse Folch ................................... 50
Gaspar Hernàndez .................................. 50
Pilar Jericó ............................................... 51
Allan Percy ............................................... 51
5
FICTION
GENERAL FICTION
Víctor Amela
La filla del capità groc (Capitàn Groc’s Daughter)
historical fiction
Manuela Penarrocha is thirteen years old, with grey eyes and golden hair. She
sews sandals like no other, thinking of her father. He had taken similar ones to
war, as the rest of the Carlists, men of sandals, walking stick, blunderbuss and
knife on the belt. She misses his tough look, filled with tenderness, his loud laugh.
She just wants him to get back to watch him fight for their ideals, to go back to his
family, the town, the lost dignity, to life or to death. Tomàs Penarrocha, her father,
is known in Forcall as the Blond, because of his hair.
Spain: Planeta (Spanish and Catalan), 2016 (420 pp.); France: Belfond
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Paloma Bravo
Solos (Alone)
Javi and Elena are in their late forties, remarried and considering a divorce. Their
friends Ana and Tomas are both single and free. At a party, the four of them start
discussing certain issues that worry us all: fear, relationships, friendship, sex,
death… Constantly torn between pain and laughter, the four main characters try
to face their fears and disappointments with hope but also with humour. Yasmina
Reza’s cruel irreverence meets Woody Allen’s witty humour. Undisciplined in
its form, crystal clear in its content, this is a shameless unisex piece of fiction,
utterly necessary to understand life. At the end of the day we are all alone.
Spain: Alfabia, 2016 (198 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
6
Linda & Charles Carlino
That other Juana (Queen Juana I of Spain - Juana la Loca)
That other Juana is the fictionalised biography of Queen Juana I of Spain (1479–1555),
daughter of Ferdinand and Isabel, sister of Catherine of Aragon, mother of Charles V,
Holy Roman Emperor, and grandmother of Philip II. It is the story of Juana’s life from
the moment of her departure for Flanders for her arranged marriage with Philip the Fair,
until the end of her days, alone, abandoned and betrayed by her closest loved ones.
English: Veritas publishing 2007, Portugal, Editorial Presença, Spain: Editorial Boveda
Wives & Other Women (Philip II of Spain)
Philip II of Spain was the son of Charles V (HRE) and grandson of Queen Juana I of
Spain. This is the story of his marriages and mistresses — and his need to provide a
suitable male heir. With a background of family turmoil and a court plagued by
intrigue and treachery, the result is a fascinating and very lively story.
English: Veritas publishing 2008, Portugal: Editorial Presença, Spain: Ed. Boveda
A Matter of Pride. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor – king, soldier, lover
This is a novel which takes a humorous and rather sceptical view of the Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V, king, soldier and lover - a story about power, passion and regrets.
Based on a cast of unforgettable characters: friends, family and servants in humorous
confrontations reminding Charles of his past. The result is a very human portrait of the
man considered one of the most important European Emperors.
English: Veritas publishing 2008, Portugal: Editorial Presença, Spain: Ed. Bóveda
Ana (Ana of Austria (1568 – 1629)) by Linda and Charles Carlino
“Ana” is a beautifully written historical novel based on known historical facts, set in late 16th
century Portugal and Spain. It is both a historical mystery and a love story. When
María Ana de Austria y de Mendoza (known as Ana de Austria) fell in love with
Espinoza who claimed the Portuguese throne as king Sebastian, she was drawn into
the dangerous controversary concerning the legitimate heir to the Portuguese
throne, the outcome being crucial to Portugal’s independence from Spain. To this
day the episode known as “The Pastry Chef of Madrigal”, remains controversial
and unresolved.
English: Vertitas Publishing 2011, Portugal: Editorial Presença
Translation rights worldwide (except Portugal and Spain): SvH Literarische Agentur
7
David Cantero
El destino era esto (What was Written in the Stars)
Patricia is an attractive, selfconfident woman, successful in business, and knows
her way around the most esteemed circles. Until the day they attempt to kidnap
her and suddenly everything changes. Patricia starts feeling scared for the very
first time, so she accepts the protection of a bodyguard. Damián is a tough kind
of guy, who enjoys drowning his loneliness in whisky and solving complicated
cases. Until he meets Patricia. He is in charge of looking after her during a trip
to Marrakech. In the exotic city, under the starry sky of the desert, attraction
between the protagonists flares at times. But fate always has its own plans…
Spain: Ediciones B, 2016 (304 pp.)
other works: Amantea, Spain: RBA 2005; El Hombre del Baobab, Spain: Planeta, 2009; El
Viaje de Tanaka, Spain: Planeta, 2014
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
Inma Chacón
Tierra sin hombres (Land without Men)
Two sisters, Elisa and Sabela, grow up in a small village in Galicia, the North
of Spain. Their mother Rosalía brings them up without her husband Mateo,
who emigrated to America to set up a business. He also left behind his deaf
brother Manuel, who helps raising the sisters with respect and kindness. When
Rosalía starts planning her daughter Elisa’s wedding with Eloy, the only
secondary school graduate in town, she does not realize that Sabela is already
in love with him and that handsome miner Martín has other plans for Elisa. A
family saga full of intrigues, set at the turn of the twentieth century in
surroundings formed by superstition and gossip, a land of “widows” whose
husbands search for a better life, a dream that can end up haunting them all.
Spain: Planeta, September 2016 (480 pp.)
other works: Mientras pueda pensarte, Spain: Planeta, 2013; Italy: Salani
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
8
Carmen Gallardo
Los fantasmas se cuelan sin forzar las cerraduras (Ghosts Sneak in Without a Key)
Advertising designer by chance Ángela Barrios has two nieces, a boyfriend and a
dog, and is well into her fifties but still feels like an eighteen-year-old. Until her
company wants her to retire. But Ángela is one of those women who fought to
change their role in the world. She writes a blog to share those things that
embitter her life. Nevertheless, ghosts from the past sneak through the cracks of
her writing while she shouts at the world against the invisibility of being.
Sincere, committed, critical, a character with a sharp and sarcastic voice:
“Without hardly noticing, one day you realize that life has gone by.”
Spain: La Pereza, 2016 (200 pp.)
other works: La reina de las lavanderas (Queen of the laundresses), Spain: La Esfera, 2012
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
Begoña García Carteron
La montaña maldita (The Cursed Mountain)
historical fiction
In the decade of 1890, an attack leads Barcelona to be declared in state of siege. Everyone with
libertarian ideals is considered a violent anarchist. Magda, a cigar seller, is afraid
for her brother Pep, who had already been arrested 3 years before. The police are
after him and his wife. Together with Tina, a relative, Magda will find him in the
dungeons of Montjuïc castle, claiming his innocence. Linked to the workers and
the Union’s leader, Teresa de Claramunt, a young amateur theater company
staging a play by Ibsen and the link to modernist artists Ramón Casas and
Santiago Rusiñol will initiate her own personal tragedy.
Spain: Ediciones B (Spanish and Catalan) 2016, (424 pp.)
other works: El barrio de la playa, Spain: Ediciones B (Spanish and Catalan), 2014 (368 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
9
Natalio Grueso
Woody Allen. El ultimo genio (Woody Allen. The Ultimate Genius)
Woody Allen is, indisputably, one of the most important personalities of
today’s culture. Film director, playwright and writer, but above all an
intellectual whose work has decisively influenced generations of audiences all
over the world. This book shows us the New York genius, for the first time
seen through the eyes of people who had the privilege of knowing him and
working with him during his career. It reveals the crucial influence that
European cinema and culture had on his work.
Drafted as a non-fictional novel, this book is divided into several chapters –
one for each issue that marked the career of the filmmaker: music, luck,
magic, fame, desolation, vital helplessness and death. These issues repeatedly
appear in his works and form the base of his filmography.
Spain: Plaza & Janés, November 2015, Germany: Hoffmann und Campe, 2016, Italy: Salani
La Soledad (The Solitude)
The Solitude is a thrilling journey to the human soul, an adventure full of
imagination and sensitivity in which desire, gratitude, justice, humour and
dreams mix all together. A bunch of unforgettable characters, which will
remain for a long time in the heart of the readers, form the core of this novel:
the charming thief Bruno Labastide, the book prescriptor, the hunter of
dreams, young Lucas who smuggles poems, or the beautiful Japanese lady
with eyes the colour of honey who challenges destiny every night from her
Venetian apartment.
This page turner takes us around the world, from Paris to Buenos Aires, from
Venice to Shanghai, from Guatemala to Baghdad, involving the reader in the
awesome vital trip of its characters, lonely loosers who nevertheless pursuit the most beautiful
and amazing goal in life: to achieve the happiness of others.
Spain: Planeta, 2014 (288pp); Germany: Hoffmann und Campe/Atlantik, August 2015; France:
Presses de la Cité; Italy: Salani; Czech Republic: Host Vydavatelstvi; Turkey: Pegasus
Yaymcihk, Greece: Klidarithmos Publications EPE
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
10
Nadia Guhlam & Javier Diéguez
fictionalized autobiographies
La primera estrella de la noche (The First Star at Night)
Going back to her native Afghanistan, where Nadia is hoping to find her cousin
Mersal and honor her deceased aunt, she will discover the hidden story of the
women in her family, of their roots and of herself as a woman. It is a story of
search, of family revelations, of unanswered questions, and most of all, a story that
shows the reality women experience in societies so distant from our own.
Spain: Plaza & Janés, 2016 (296 pp.); Rosa dels Vents (Catalan), 2016; Portugal:
Ediçoes Asa II
Nadia Guhlam & Agnès Rotger
El secreto de mi turbante
This book tells the real story of Nadia Ghulam, an Afghan girl that deceived and
defied the Taliban Regime. After two years hospitalised due to the wounds
produced by a bomb during the Civil War, Nadia stumbles upon a new order that
forbids women to get a job. To help her family, she is forced to make a radical
decision: to pretend being a man for ten years.
Spain: Planeta (Spanish), 2010 (304 pp.), Columna (Catalan), Erein Argitaletxea
(Basque); Portugal: Ediçoes Asa II; Italy: Sperling & Kupfer; Poland: Bellona
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Daniel Jimenez
Cocaína (Cocaine)
Madrid, 2013. While the whole country is celebrating New Year’s Eve, Daniel has
locked himself up in a cold gloomy house with two cats and three grams of cocaine.
Writing is the only thing that keeps him alive. Nothing can save him – or maybe one
thing can. Cocaína is a story of redemption. It is a wrathful novel about life and
death, disenchantment and survival, in which addiction becomes the reflection of a
whole generation.
Spain: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2016 (192 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
11
Gemma Lienas
Un tesoro escondido (A Hidden Treasure)
Eva is tormented by the mirrors that surround her. They reflect a delusive and
falsified image, which keeps her from seeing her full potential. With the help of
a good friend, she becomes aware of her inner view, the right view. This
experience will start a chain of advices for other women to realize their own
potential.
Learn how to break the silence about what distresses you, how to see yourself in
a positive way and to enforce your self-esteem. This book offers ten steps to
discover your hidden treasure. Written in an elegant and convincing style, Eva’s
life will be the mirror for many others. A very emotional story about how we can project our
image to the people that surround us.
Spain: Comanegra (Spanish and Catalan) to be published 2016 (125 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Mari Carmen Martínez Tomás
Aloha (Aloha)
Alma is a doctor and, at her forty years of age, she seems to have everything she
needs to be happy: a husband, a comfortable house… but she feels incomplete.
To sort things out, she starts a trip towards the unknown that will take her to live
and work in Honolulu. In Hawaii she learns of an old tradition that shows her a
new way of living. Together with a woman shaman, guardian of that tradition,
she starts a process of self-healing with the vital power of nature. Alma will get
to know herself in depth and discovers the key for her own paradise.
Spain: Ediciones Urano, 2016 (288 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
12
Francesc Miralles
Un rayo de esperanza (A Gleam of Hope)
What would you save from a fire?
That is the question that four lonely people ask each other, meeting casually at
Café Turner, the only place open in a small coastal town in mid-winter. Imagine
if your house was burning down and you only had time enough to save the one
thing that makes your life worth living. This conversation, which starts off as a
game, will have completely unexpected consquences, bringing together the
destinies of the four protagonists who have come to find a new purpose in their
lives.
Spain: Plataforma Editorial, 2016 (144 pp.)
Amor en minúscula (Love in Small Letters)
Sold to 14 countries! Longseller in Germany
with more than 60.000 copies sold! English
rights: Alma Books
Wabi-Sabi
When a relationship ends, nothing is better than travelling to a distant world to
move on and rediscover the course itself. After receiving two postcards of
Kyoto from a mysterious sender, Samuel decides to pack up and dedicate
himself to adventure. While studying wabi-sabi in Japan’s ancient capital, he
gets to know the beauty of imperfect things – and the door of love is about to
open up where least expected.
Spain: Ara Llibres/Amsterdam (Catalan, 201 pp.), Ediciones B (Spanish),
2014; Germany: Ullstein; Brazil: Record; English rights: Alma; Portugal:
Marcador
other works: Ojalá estuvieras aquí, Spain: Vergara, 2009 (288 pp.); Germany: Ullstein/List;
Portugal: Contraponto Record
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
13
Francesc Miralles & Alex Rovira
Un corazón lleno de estrellas (A Heart Made of Stars)
fable
Selonsville, 1946: In a long cold winter a city is still recovering from war. In an
orphanage, Michel and Eri, inseparable friends, are gazing at the night sky from the
roof. They don’t know that Eri won’t wake up the next morning. She falls into a
deep coma, and only Michel will be able to change her destiny. He has to create a
heart out of pieces of clothes from nine people. To make it beat, he needs to find the
secret of endless love, which is hidden right at the bottom of his own heart.
Spain: Aguilar, 2011 (176 pp.), Ara Llibres (Catalan); Germany: Ullstein; China:
Yuan-Liou Publishing Co.; Portugal: Lua de Papel
other works: La última respuesta (The last answer), Spain: Plaza & Janés, 2010 (416 pp.), Edicions 62 (Catalan),
Germany: Ullstein, China: Jieli Publishing, Italy: Newton Compton; La luz de Alejandría (The light of Alexandria),
Spain: Plaza & Janés, 2012, Italy: Newton Compton; El laberinto de la felicidad (The maze of happiness), Spain:
Aguilar (Spanish), Ara Llibres (Catalan), China: Eurasian Publishing (Complex Chinese), Thinkingdom Media
(Chinese), Korea: ChungRim Publishing, Netherlands: Uitgeverij Forum, Italy: Sperling & Kupfer, Japan: Goma
Books, Brazil: Editora Objetiva, Portugal: Editora Pergaminho, Turkey: Literatür Yayincilik; El mapa del tesoro
(The treasure map), Spain: Conecta, 2012, Japan: Achievement Publishing
Francesc Miralles & Care Santos
El mejor lugar del mundo es aqui mismo (The Best Place in the World is Right Here)
Iris is 36 and shattered by the death of her parents who died in an accident. One grey
and cold afternoon, when the world seems meaningless, she begins to walk the
streets trying not to return home. Just when she is thinking of doing something mad,
she discovers a café with the strange name “The best place in the world is right
here”. It intrigues her so much that she enters.
There, she meets the Italian Luca. For six days, they talk between the aromas of hot
cocoa about everything needed for existence, and wonderful things happen. The
seventh day, he doesn’t show up. In the abandoned place where the café used to be, she finds
some clues that reveal his enigmatic past. But the most important revelation is still to come…
Spain: Urano (Spanish) (186pp), Ara Llibres/Amsterdam (Catalan); France: Fleuve Noir/Pocket;
Portugal: Presença; Brazil: Record; Serbia: Mono I Manjana; Bulgaria: AMG, Rumania:
Humanitas, Macedonia: Izdavachki Centar Tri, Korea: Munhakdongne Publishing, China:
Ping’s Publications; Germany: Ullstein/List
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
14
Alejandro Palomas
Un perro (A Dog)
Sitting in a café one afternoon in early summer, Fer and his mother, Amalia, wait for
a call that never comes. When the phone finally rings, it leads to unexpected
company, and carries a flood of confessions, questionable truths, as well as five letters
from a sender who has been banned from the family’s memory, but Fer dares to
invoke. Un perro is not just a portrait of the fascinating bond between a man and his
dog, but a swirl of emotions that are put together, forming a tender and raw picture of
a family and a tribute to love in all its manifestations.
Spain: Destino (Spanish), 2016 (300 pp.), Grup 62 (Catalan), France: Le Cherche-Midi
Una madre (A Mother)
Una madre tells the story of a dinner, and of the seven attendants who are bound to
share the beginning of a new life none of them has envisioned. At last, after
several failed attempts, now that she is 65, Amalia has succeeded to have her
dream fulfilled: the whole family has gathered to celebrate New Year's Eve.With
her sense of humor and determination, Amalia weaves around the table a net of
invisible threads meant to unite and protect her three children, her daughter-in-law
and her brother. She mends the silences of some, and channels the present and
future of others. She knows, as everyone senses, that this is going to be a long night: full of
secrets and lies, laughter and confessions made by children who are late — though in time —,
and words held for too long which will finally explode to enlighten the path that is left to run.
Amalia knows this is the time to take action, and she is not willing to let anything get in her way.
Spain: Siruela/Group 62, 2014 (248pp); Italy: Neri Pozza, Brazil: Casa da Palavra, Portugal:
Presenca, France: Le Cherche-Midi, Poland: Foksal, Bulgaria: Smart Books
other works: Un hijo, Spain: La Galera (Spanish and Catalan), 2015; Italy: Neri Pozza; Agua
cerrada, Spain: Siruela, 2012 (176 pp.), Germany: Berlin Verlag; El alma del mundo, Spain:
Espasa, 2011 (304 pp.); El secreto de los Hoffmann, Spain: Debolsillo, 2009 (272 pp.),
Germany: Berlin Verlag, Netherlands: Signature; Tanta vida, Spain: Martinez Roca, 2007 (368
pp.), Germany: Berlin Verlag, Netherlands: Signature; El tiempo que nos une, Spain: Suma de
Letras (576 pp.), Columna (Catalán), 2011
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
15
Malenka Ramos
Quimera. Las edades bárbaras (Chimera. Barbaric Ages)
erotic/romance
During the fifties, punishing children, putting them in solitary confinement and
abusing them was a daily occurrence at the San Torbe orphanage. Antón
promised himself to go back as a man, to knock down the place to build a home
for everybody, no matter their condition, sexuality or inclinations. Forty years
later, all those kids have grown up and are still in contact, but don’t want to
return to this place. So Antón sends each one of them a letter. Will he be able to
reunite all his friends? And most of all… What happened there, that changed
them for the rest of their lives?
Spain: Urano, 2016 (346 pp.)
other works: Garden Manor. Juega conmigo (Garden Manor. Play with me), Spain: Ediciones
Urano, 2015 (288 pp.); Venganza (Vengeance, erotic triology), Spain: Planeta 2014. Brazil:
Objetiva; Portugal: Planeta Manuscrito Unipessoal
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Marta del Riego Ante
Mi nombre es Sena (My Name is Sena)
Berlin is getting ready for the year 2000. Sena and her group of eccentric friends
are riding their bikes restlessly through the bustling city in search of something
intangible. As for Sena, she is not what she seems to be: Neither the girl who
spent an idyllic childhood in the rural northwest of Spain, nor the wife of an
upper class German man. She is desperately searching for change until she meets
Yuri, a mysterious and fascinating Russian Jew who will gradually erase any
reminiscence of her life. Nevertheless, what seems to be a crazy love story turns
out to be a true nightmare, as both of them cannot easily undo their past.
Spain: Harper Collins, September 2016 (384 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
16
Glòria Sabaté
La filla de Lilith (Lilith’s Daughter)
historical fiction
Barcelona, winter of 1377.
The brothel in Viladalls wakes up in horror with the discovery of a dead body: a
regular customer, with his testicles pulled off and an utter expression of terror
and pain on his face, only to be the first of many. Joan Marçol, prestigious
surgeon and barber and enchanted by the, less orthodox, new medical practices
that arrive from university, is in charge of investigating the event. He gets help
from the young Hasday Benvenist, a Jewish and passionate alchemist, and from
the healer Mary, a woman with a special gift. Their investigation will lead them
to the darkest and most mysterious parts of the city, where they’ll find
vengeance and treachery, the power of greed and love… and the existence of an old and primitive
creature that has been awoken and is hungry.
Spain: Ediciones B (Spanish and Catalan), 2016 (288 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Paloma Sánchez-Garnica
Mi recuerdo es más fuerte que tu olvido (My Memory is stronger than your Oblivion)
Independent, with a brilliant career and respected by colleagues and friends,
Carlota has everything to be happy. But she will always be missing a real
Christmas Day she has never had. When she was twelve years old, her mother
revealed a terrible secret she had been keeping all those years, and Carlota
knew that nothing would ever be the same again. The word “bastard” sticks to
her as a stigma. Decades later, a phone call from her dying father will leave her
torn between the desperate desire of discovering the whole truth and the
instinctive impulse of running away.
A family saga set in Madrid, where the members are trapped between secrets,
lies, memories and oblivion. A novel with complex female protagonists, about the social status
and its evolution over three generations of women, about the individual capacity for a pursuit of
happiness, about forgiveness.
Winner of the 2016 Fernando Lara Award.
Spain: Planeta 2016 (477pp.)
17
Paloma Sánchez-Garnica
La sonata del silencio (The Sonata of Silence)
A moving story about love, friendship and betrayal: Marta Ribas has a promising
future as a pianist when she meets Antonio. She renounces her dreams to start a
family. When Antonio falls ill, she is obliged to work to sustain the family and
finds herself exposed to the gossip of the neighbourhood and the indignation of
her husband who feels humiliated. But unexpectedly, Marta gets the chance to
assure her and her daughter’s survival and find her place in the world.
La sonata del silencio is a novel about passion, jealousy and dreams. It is the
story of postwar Spain, the Spain of the chestnut sellers and coal merchants, of
the legendary cocktail bar Chicote and nylon tights – like a building where
fortune and poorness, triumph and failure are only separated by a thin wall.
Spain: Planeta 2014 (892pp.), Italy: Piemme
TV series in Spain
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
Care Santos
Diamant Blau (Blue Diamond)
This book takes the reader into the past of a Barcelona family, to the first
decades of the 20th century when the splendour of the bourgeoisie contrasts
with the social unrest in town. It is the story of Teresa Marqués and the love of
her life, Silvestre Pujol, who founded the familiy business that leads them to
prosperty. It is also the story of their granddaughter, Teresa Pujol, who breaks
with the social rules of society and her family at the verge of bancruptcy to
follow her heart and lead her own life.
Spain: Columna (Catalan), Destino (Spanish) 2015 (446 pp.), Netherlands:
Wereldbibliotheek
other works: Deseo de chocolate (Desire for Chocolate), Spain: Planeta/Columna, 2014 (Premi
Ramón Llull), Germany: Lübbe, France: Laffont, Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek, Sweden:
Bonnier, Italy: Salani, Brazil: Record, English world rights: Alma Books, Rumania:
Humanitas publishing, Bulgaria: Smart Books, Finland: Schildts & Söderströms, Poland: Sonia
18
Draga, Portugal: Planeta Manuscrito; El aire que respiras (The air that you breathe), Spain:
Planeta, 2012, Italy: Salani, France: Laffont, Sweden: Bonnier;
Habitaciones cerradas, Spain: Planeta, 2011 (496 pp.), Germany: Fischer, Greece: Psichogios,
Italy: Salani, Portugal: Planeta, Brazil: Record, Netherlands: Wereldbibliotheek, France:
Grasset et Fasquelle, Norway: Cappelen Damm, Sweden: Bonnier, Romania: Humanitas,
Poland: Albatros, Israel: Kinneret-Zmora, Turkey: Pegasus Yayinlari; La muerte de Venus,
Spain: Espasa, 2007 (415 pp.), Booket, Germany: Droemer Knaur, Italy: Vertigo
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Sílvia Soler
L’estiu que comença (The Summer that Begins)
This novel spans 50 years in the life of Julia Reig and Andreu Balart —linked to
each other since before they were born through their mothers’ friendship,
hopefully anticipating that their children would inherit their bond or even fall in
love. Julia and Andreu, though, want to get rid of this fate that persists in joining
them.
Spain: Planeta (Spanish and Catalan, 223 pp.), 2013; Italy: Mondadori, France:
Robert Laffont
other works: Un any i mig (A Year and a Half), Spain: Columna (Spanish and Catalan, 320 pp.),
2015
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
19
Sílvia Tarragó
El tiempo de la luz (Times of Light)
Ever since their inauguration in 1940 as the first subterranean galleries in
Europe, the luxurious Avenue of Light has been a mirror for the changes in post
war Barcelona. Julia, a young woman who just got to the city, falls in love with a
train supervisor from Sarrià. A few years later, a forbidden passion will result in
terrible consequences. A mysterious lady opening a typewriter shop. A railway
worker who writes poems while he walks between the columns. These characters
make up a world that keeps changing, decade after decade, following the
exciting beat of Barcelona from the postwar until the 1980s.
Spain: Urano (Spanish), Columna (Catalan), 2016 (256 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Coia Valls
Etheria (Etheria)
historical fiction
In the beginning of the Middle Ages, two women with very different beliefs
wander Gallaecia land. Etheria belongs to a community of women who have
escaped the demands of nobility through religion, but is secretly part of the
Priscillianist movement. Irene is the daughter of a Roman senator who, with his
family being besieged by the Christians, decides to serve the cause of paganism.
Symmachus, governor of Rome and spokesman of a noble class which continues
to boost the banner of paganism, tries to convince the Emperor that the greatness
of Roman civilization is rooted in ancient beliefs.
Spain: Ediciones B, (405 pp.)
other works: Amor prohibido (Forbidden love), Spain: Ediciones B, 2015 (344 pp.); La
cocinera (The cook), Spain: Ediciones B, 2014; Las torres del cielo (The towers of the sky),
Spain: Ediciones B (Spanish and Catalan), 2013; La princesa de Jade, Spain: Ediciones B
(Spanish and Catalan), 2011
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
20
Rafael Vídac
El hombre más rico del mundo (The Richest Man of the World)
With no job and in the middle of the worst crisis in his life, Nicolas receives the
most unbelievable proposal anyone has ever offered him: to work for the
powerful business group owned by Daniel Weelock, one of the richest people
on the planet. Nevertheless, he’ll have to surpass a strange personal preparation
process along with the eccentric and charismatic billionaire.
Throughout an unpredictable trip he will never forget, Nicolas will transform
his body, he will heal forgotten wounds from the past and will start to realize
the true potential of his own mind…
Spain: Editorial Paidós, 2016 (232 pp.); Lithuania: Alma Littera
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
21
THRILLER & CRIME
Santi Baró
El informe Ahnenerbe (Report Ahnenerbe)
historical thriller
Ten years after “El informe Ahnenerbe”, by Marcos Clos, was published, a kid
with no name, who lived hidden with his parents in an apartment in Barcelona for
nine years, disappears under strange circumstances. Nagore, the private teacher
who is in charge of the boy’s education, will be the one to discover the truth of
both his disappearance and his parents. All clues lead precisely to Marcos. With
him as an ally, Nagore will relive the exact same experiences as the author did ten
years before. A search that, by chance, will lead them to discover the real treasure
Hitler was looking for in the heart of the Montserrat Mountain.
Spain: Ediciones B (Spanish and Catalan), 2016 (328 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Sebastià Bennassar
El país de los crepúsculos (The Land of Dusk)
detective novel
The cold has started to arrive at la Vall de Boí. Along with the first snow comes
an implacable murderer who is leaving tortured and martyred corpses in the
World Heritage churches. Inspector Jaume Fuster – a man who does not fear
anything – will have to face old medieval superstitions among the white beauty
of the valley. A novel that takes us to one of the most splendid landscapes in the
Catalan countries, under an intense freezing Nordic atmosphere combined with
Mediterranean echoes and North-American violence.
Spain: Editorial AlReves (Spanish and Catalan), 2016 (300 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
22
Carmen Conde
Para morir siempre hay tiempo (There is Always Time Left for Dying)
thriller
Being a frustrated and obsessive writer addicted to drugs, Julia Irazu is a true
expert in having a complicated live. But this time, the problems come from
outside. She accidentally gets involved in an art trafficking network, among
millionaires’ interests and ruthless criminals. There she meets Viktor Sokolov,
an alleged Russian spy with whom she will go on an adventure full of danger
from Bilbao over Palermo to Saint Petersburg. Paradoxically, that is when
Julia discovers a basic principle: there is always time to die.
Spain: Ediciones B, 2016 (368 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Horacio Convertini
Los que duermen en el polvo (Sleepers in the Dust)
dystopian thriller
A zombie outbreak devastates Argentina. Survivors find shelter in the Patagonia, where they
eventually manage to start a new life. To defeat the zombies, the government decides to station
troops in Buenos Aires. Jorge volunteers as a minor civil servant. His wife, Erica, has
mysteriously gone missing. Returning to the couple’s old house in Buenos Aires, Jorge faces his
own ghosts. He starts an affair with a young woman; one night, she is found dead at the garrison.
This won’t be the only strange death to happen within the military compound’s security
perimeter. Meanwhile, Jorge tries to find out what really happened to Erica.
Argentina: to be published by Alfaguara, 2017
other works: New Pompey, Argentina: Del Nuevo Extremo, 2015 (190 pp.); El último milagro,
Argentina: Del Nuevo Extremo, 2013 (174 pp.); La soledad del mal, Argentina: Eduvim, 2012
(141 pp.); El refuerzo, Argentina: Punto Cero, 2008 (109 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
23
Empar Fernández
Trilogy of Guilt
thriller/noir
#1 La mujer que no bajó del avión (The Woman who didn’t get off the Plane)
Guilt is somewhat diffuse, shared and able to ruin a life. Discover why Sara didn’t get off
that plane. Spain: Versátil, 2014 (276 pp.)
#2 La última llamada (The Last Call)
Naomi Monteagudo went out one night to celebrate the end of course, but never returned
home. Before disappearing, she made a last call to her father. Spain: Versátil, 2015
(276 pp.)
#3 Maldita verdad (Damned Truth)
One night in late September, Olga returns home at midnight, exhausted and feeling more
alone than ever. What she will discover the next day will lead her to know the real life of
her 17 year-old son, Daniel. Spain: Versátil, 2016 (276 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Fernando Goitia
La sacudida (The Shake)
thriller
A volcano erupts over three thousand people while Hurricane Mitch is devastating Central
America. A Basque journalist arrives at the tragedy’s scene to report and digs up
a man without identity, dying in the rubble. Without knowing, he saves the life
of a man he is condemned to confrontate and with whom he has two things in
common: both live under a false identity and their hands are stained with blood.
Travelling through a desolate land, destroyed by the hurricane, they must face
themselves, unmask each other and perhaps commit an ultimate crime. A story
of victims and executioners?
Spain: Ediciones B (Spanish and Catalan) 2016, (360 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
24
Miguel Ángel Molfino
Monstruos Perfectos (Perfect Monsters)
noir
“There was blood everywhere and the buzz of the flies moved the air thick with
death.”
This is the scene when teenager Miroslavo Hordt finds his parents dead in a
place in the Chaco region that seems to have been left to its fate. He buries
them and flees, knowing full well that he will be pursued as the prime suspect.
In the course of his flight, he meets Hansen, an arms dealer. This is just the
beginning of a relationship between the protector and the protégé, the first step
of young Hordt’s introduction to crime.
Miguel Ángel Molfino spins a plot that does honor to the code of the genre and
transports the readers to a world they will not be able to leave until the last page, staying under a
ferocious spell, breathing the air of the bloodiest nightmares.
Finalist of Premio Memorial Silverio Cañada 2011 - Semana Negra de Gijón, Finalista of
Premio Violeta Negra 2014, del Festival Internacional de Literatura Policial de Toulouse.
Spanish worldwide: Ediciones B 2015 (208 pp.); France: Flammarion
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
Oriol Nolis
La extraña historía de Maurice Lyon (The Strange Story of Maurice Lyon)
thriller
Maurice Lyon is the eldest son of a prominent family of French art collectors.
Since his birth, Maurice seems destined to inherit the extraordinary collection of
paintings which for centuries have been passed from father to son. But one
serious incident in their elegant Parisian residence will change his life forever.
He is disowned by his family and banished to Barcelona where he plans his
revenge. In the process we will discover the intricate mazes that trace his dark
personality and the mysteries that build the strange story of Maurice Lyon.
Spain: Suma, 2016 (256 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
25
Pablo del Palacio
Antes de conocerte (Before I Met You)
romantic thriller
When Lucas meets Tadea, a friend of his girlfriend Patricia, love at first sight
strikes. Their encounter will affect both their lives and everyone close to them.
Not only will they discover love and hatred but also a mysterious book which
tells the story of a passionate relationship only too similar to theirs. It could
have been a funny coincidence – if only it had a happy ending and if they could
be sure it was all pure fiction – which does not seem to be the case. The young
couple will get into an inevitable and dangerous search towards a past that could
possibly explain the present but also disrupt their own future.
Spain: Planeta, October 2016 (384 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
David Vicente
Esto podría ser un gambito de dama, pero es una canción de amor
(This Could be a Queen’s Gambit)
thriller
In 1988, at the close of Cold War, the star of soviet chess, Elena Ajmilóvskaia,
runs away with the captain of the US team, while participating in the Olympic
Games of Thessaloniki. Meanwhile KGB agent Víktor Bakatin, head of
surveillance of the USSR selection, is getting drunk at the hotel bar unaware of it
all. Elena’s desertion falls together with the Soviet team’s historical first defeat by
the Hungarian Polgar sisters, and will have serious consequences for Víktor’s life.
A story about chess, politics, but, above all, it is a story about unconditional love
which demonstrates that history can be explained better through fiction rather than school
textbooks.
Spain: Almuzara, October 2016
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
26
LITERARY FICTION
Selva Almada
El desapego es una manera de querernos (Detachment is a Way to Love One Another)
short stories
Dispersed or unfindable, these stories provide us with a new way to access the
literature of Selva Almada. The naps and the streams, the thistles, the machines, the
paths along the Argentine coast. The heat. Workmates, siblings, grandparents,
parents, lovers and friends. And among them, the unspoken codes that reveal the
nature of the ties that bind them and the dialogues that affirm and transform them.
Spain: Random House, 2015 (294 pp.)
Ladrilleros (Brick Makers)
Pájaro Tamai and Marciano Miranda, two 20-year-olds, die in a deserted
amusement park after a knife fight – the culmination of an enmity that existed
since their childhood, bequeathed to them by their fathers. Death is part of
Ladrilleros as are hallucinations: Marciano is visited by the ghost of his father;
Pájaro is also visited, as in a returning nightmare, by his abusive father who
disappeared years ago. All of this is told by an omniscient narrator but from the
point of view of each character, so that narrator and character blur. Flashbacks
show the story of the two families. Still, love emerges between Pájaro and
Ángel Miranda, what, inexorably, leads to death. A sort of homosexual Romeo
and Juliet, Ladrilleros is set in a hostile environment, full of fight-prone, drunken men and lonely
children.
Argentina: Editorial Mardulce, 2012; Spain: Lumen, 2014; France: Éditions Metailié;
Netherlands: Meulenhoff; Film rights optioned
other works: El viento que arrasa, Argentina: Editorial Mardulce, 2012; France: Métailié;
Brazil: Cosac y Naifi; Italy: Rizzoli (film rights sold); Germany: Berenberg Verlag; Film
rights sold; Chicas muertas, Argentina: Mondadori, 2014; TV series rights sold
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
27
María Teresa Andruetto
Los manchados (The Stained)
“Los manchados is a novel which, as part of a clear literary and political
tradition, represents a deepening of the outstanding work Maria Teresa
Andruetto has done in her previous books. The reconstruction, through various
stories, of a life and of the history of a family. But the reconstruction is also
that of the life of people, since in Andruetto’s work the relationship between
subject and history is central. (…)
Thus, in Los manchados, the search Julieta carries out regarding her family
history, based on various versions and voices of the inhabitants of Tama, also
takes up the shrapnel left by the tensions of national politics, from the stories
about Chacho Penaloza, that father of all, that sort of Pedro Páramo, to the
bombing of the Plaza de Mayo, the shootings at José León Suárez, the genocide of 1976 and
exile. All this is etched into family memory. ‘Memory is a strange thing,’ says one character. And
so at the bottom of Andruetto’s writing, there is always the resonance of the consciousness of a
working class which has been decimated, but which nevertheless resists in the orality of the
humble, survives in the traces that Julieta recovers during the course of the book and which like
the stain that the stained wear on their skins are also part of it.” Hernan Rosino
Argentina: Random House, 2015 (188 pp.)
other works: Lengua madre (Mother Tongue), Argentina: Mondadori, 2009 (231 pp.); La mujer
en cuestión (The Woman in Question), Argentina: Alción editora, 2003 (120 pp.), Mondadori,
2009, Switzerland (German): Rotpunktverlag, 2010; Todo movimiento es cacería (Any
Movement is a Hunting Game) short stories, Argentina: Alción editora, 2002, 5th edition 2006
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
28
Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
Romance de la Negra Rubia
In the midst of threats from the police, TV cameras, a poet sets himself on fire in resistance to an
eviction. This is a story of various groups of artists, and evictees who call their camp
an installation and the life they lead there a performance. But then, the power of
sainthood and political opportunism makes them the legal owners of the very building
they have been thrown out before.
Argentine: Eterna Cadencia, 2014 (80 pp.)
La virgen Cabeza
At the villa El Poso, the life of transvestite Cleopatra takes a 180-degree turn when
one day the Virgin Mary appears to her. Cleopatra decides to give up prostitution and
starts to preach among her peers. Qüity, a journalist, gains entry into El Poso in order
to do a groundbreaking feature. A love story that is completely different, blending
comedy with drama, social critique with entertainment.
Argentine: Eterna Cadencia, 2009 (168 pp.)
Graphic novels with Iñaki Echeverría
Y su despojo fue una muchedumbre
The lives of three contemporary martyrs are described: the Tunisian Mohamed
Bouazizi, who set himself on fire and thus started the Arab Spring, the Argentinian
Omar Carrascim whose murder led to the abolition of the draft, and Dilar
Gencxemis, the Kurdish guerrilla fighter alias Arin Mirkan, who died in a battle
against the IS: Her death was the beginning of the liberation of Kobane. Three
stories between chronicle and poetry.
Spain: Cazador de Ratas, 2015 (94 pp.)
BEYA. Le viste la cara a Dios
This graphic novel offers an interesting revision of the classic “Sleeping Beauty”
using it as an allegory of the sexual slavery that many women are subjected to.
Argentina: Eterna Cadencia, 2013 (125 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
29
Fabian Casas
Titanes del coco
Andrés Stella, the novel’s protagonist, is an editor at a daily newspaper. He gets
chosen to participate in the creation of a new supplement and his first commission is
to do a piece on Galarraga, a teacher who is suspected to abduct and “satanize” his
students. When, during his research, he meets the magnetic Blanca Luz, love hits him
unexpectedly. Her friend Pyman introduces Andrés to “tripping”, a discipline that
consists in jumping from rooftop to rooftop and is adapted by Andrés with fervour.
Titanes del coco is Fabián Casas’ first fictional work after nearly ten years. It is an
electrifying novel about entering the era of maturity – a portrait of the crisis of those who turned
30 in the nineties. “Tripping”, the discipline Andrés Stella gets to like so much becomes a
metaphor for this generation’s life situation.
Argentina: Emecé Cruz del Sur, 2015 (213 pp.), Spain: Literatura Mondadori, 2016
other works: Ocio, Argentina: Santiago Arcos, 2008 (105 pp.), Germany: Rotbuch, 2010,
Brazil: Rocco; Los Lemmings y otros, Argentina: Santiago Arcos, 2005, Spain: Alpha Decay,
2011; Todos los ensayos bonsai, Spain: Mondadori, 2013 (272 pp.), first edition; Ensayos
bonsai, Argentina: Planeta, 2007
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
Inés Garland
Una vida más verdadera (A Truer Life)
P shows up in the life of the story’s female protagonist after nearly forty years. The love they
shared in their teens resurfaces with the force of the soul’s deepest truths. But to fall in love at
fifteen is not the same as falling in love after a lifetime. They have only one day to meet each
week, only one day to escape social demands and the commonplaces of love. Una vida más
verdadera is the story of the questions that arise from life-changing encounters. A woman who
studies the man she loves also studies herself, looks at their lives and the shapes they took for
each one of them, and she wonders.
Argentina: to be published by Alfaguara, 2017
other works: La arquitectura del océano (stories), Argentina: Alfaguara, 2014 (112 pp); Una
reina perfecta (stories), 2008; El rey de los centauros (novel), 2006
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
30
Vera Giaconi
Seres queridos (Beloved ones)
stories
Family, friends, couples, little universes constantly under threat, not only from the outside or
circumstances, but from the unavoidable tension that exists among the most profound desires,
fears, needs, and feelings of those who inhabit them. Though the stories differ a lot from each
other, they closely observe, with compassion but without pity, the ties between siblings, parents
and children, close friends, employers and employees, etc., with a common theme: the monstrous
peculiarity love can take on. Two sisters separated by distance and the circumstances created by
the engagement of one of them to a participant in a TV reality show; a man sitting with his
sleeping mother, seeing in her his most intimate fears: old age, poverty, loneliness; a piranha
attack on a child that reveals the ferocious dynamics of an ordinary family … Giaconi shows her
mastery of the resources offered by the genre, breathing new life into a twofold tradition: that of
her Rio Plate roots with Cortázar, Silvina Ocampo, Onetti and Felisberto Hernández and that of
great 20th century US storytellers, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, Cheever and Carver.
An eminently realistic writer, Giaconi examines and questions the familiar with such rigor that
she turns it into a fragile, dense, strange, deeply disquieting place.
Spain: To be published by Anagrama 2016
Finalist of the Rivera del Duero Prize, 2015
Carne Viva (Raw Wounds)
stories
“Giaconi’s phrase, clean, substantial, forceful, composes characters and settings in
its flow and when it has made the situation palpable it lets its own tension split it
wide open. These stories, variations on the theme of the anomalous woman in the
gloomy repetitions of average private lives, are made of slippery transitions and
imprudent dialogues: when feelings become conscious, the phrase has already given
them away and another phrase comes along to consume them.
From this […] a climate of uncontrollable expectation, of naive hopes […] emerges,
one that we today are all familiar with from our own experience, even though some of us cannot
describe it. Vera Giaconi does not hide her contact with a school of English-language women
writers who have for many decades been keeping realism on tenterhooks. […] In reality she also
experiments, but in a different way – knowing that if it is not possible to recount reality, it is quite
possible to describe well with what crazy degree of error, of horror and of accuracy we perceive
it.” Marcelo Cohen
Argentina: Eterna Cadencia, 2011 (122 pp.); Israel: Zikit Books
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
31
Javier González-Cotta
Viaje por Galípoli (Journey to Gallipoli)
There is no battlefield comparable to Gallipoli: The Turkish peninsula, also known
as the mythical Hellespont, which divides Europe from Asia Minor and has been
beat by Xerxes I, Alexander the Great or Lord Byron. Arriving at Gallipoli, the
visitor can feel the peculiar conspiracy of peace and war in this place. In 1915, in
the middle of WWI, England and France tried to open a new gap to reach Turkey.
On the 25th of April, British and French soldiers attacked the beaches of Gallipoli.
Set between history and travel literature, the voice of an anonymous visitor
wanders the old trenches of the area, which have now become a memorial for
those killed in action. Gallipoli is not only a famous battleground, but the idea of a place.
Spain: Pre-textos, 2016 (680 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Pre-textos.
Ariana Harwicz
Precoz (Precocious)
In Precoz mother and son live isolated in a house with firewood piled up at the
door, meals left unfinished, fenced in by train tracks. Everything turns on the
erotic, set among the “new poor” of Europe. The characters sleep in the woods
or in front of supermarkets. We find mother and son, like two additional
undocumented immigrants rummaging through the rubbish, hunting, being
chased by the police, as the son slowly becomes a man. Precoz is also a horror
novel. But the horror is that of desire. Nothing could be more disquieting.
Spain: Mardulce Editora, 2015 (100 pp.)
other works: La débil mental, Argentina/Chile/Uruguay/Spain: Mardulce, 2014, Peru:
Animal de invierno; Matate, amor, Spain: Lengua de Trapo, 2012, Argentina: Paradiso, Israel:
Zikit Sfarim
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
32
Iosi Havilio
Pequeña flor (Little Flower)
“This story starts when I was someone else,” says José, the protagonist, in the
beginning. A fire in the factory where he works is about to unleash an
earthquake in his life. Losing his job changes everything: his relationship with
his wife and daughter, his habits, his perceptions. The encounter with his
neighbor Guillermo brings about a discovery both dark and revealing. From
this point José’s path involves a set of skills previously unfamiliar to him:
being a mother, a gardener, an actor and, fundamentally, a murderer.
Argentina: Literatura Random House, 2015 (128 pp.)
other works: Paraíso, Argentina: Mondadori (352 pp.), Spain: Caballo de Troya, England:
Other Stories Publishing; Estocolmo, Argentina: Mondadori, Spain: Caballo de Troya, 2010;
Opendoor, Argentina: Editorial Entropia, 2006, Spain: Caballo de Troya, Italy: Caravan
Edizioni, England: Other Stories Publishing
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
33
Joke Hermsen
.
Blindgangers (Walking wounded)
The winter is upon us. It has come early this year. A group of old friends is well
aware of the change of seasons as they make their way out of Amsterdam in the
Friday rush hour, all in their own cars through heavy snowfall to a country
house in Drenthe, owned by one of them. They became friends during their time
at University and met through the Student club Nil Desperandum ‘never
despair’. There is something recognisable about the middle aged educated
circle: they are either married or divorced, living together but not childless,
childless but not alone, having an affair or all of the above. They finally arrive
at the house, tired and late and there are not enough beds for everyone. The old
group together with their partners and offspring will now spend the weekend under one roof, and
things will take an unexpected turn…
Netherlands: Arbeiderspers 2012 (370pp)
nominated for the Libris Literature Prize
De liefde dus (So its love)
*More than 20,000 hardbacks sold in the Netherlands
A REAL-LIFE MADAME BOVARY
1785: Dutch-born, blue-blooded, blue-stocking, Belle van Zuylen, also known
as Madame de Charrière, lives in Switzerland with her dull but loyal husband.
She falls in love with a much younger, handsome banker, Charles. When he
breaks off their relationship, because his family doesn’t approve and because
he must marry, Belle’s world falls apart. She escapes to Paris to try to make
sense of things. Should she reconcile with Charles? Leave her husband? Run
away to America? Combining extracts of actual letters with fictional diary
extracts and traditional narrative passages, J.J. Hermsen has written an
exceptional, thought-provoking historical novel based on a true story about
love and marriage which will resonate with any modern day reader.
*Belle van Zuylen was one of the most important European women of letters of her time. Her
circle included Constant, Rousseau, Voltaire and Mme de Stael. Experience the heartbreaking
summer of 1785 through her eyes.
Netherlands: Arbeiderspers 2011
Halewijn Prize in 2009.
German and Spanish translation rights: All other rights Arbeiderspers
34
Mario Levrero (Uruguay 1940-2004),
Author of a multifaceted work and a reference in Uruguayan literature!
WORK: Diario de un canalla y Burdeos, 1972, Argentina:
Mondadori, 2013; Spain: Mondadori, 2014;
La caza de Conejos (thematically related short stories illustr. by
Pilar González), Uruguay: Editorial La Plaza, 1986 (100 pp.);
Spain: Zorro rojo, 2012;
El alma de Gardel, short novel, Argentina: Ediciones Trilce, 1996
(93 pp.), Random House Mondadori, 2012;
La novela luminosa, posthumously published, Argentina:
Alfaguara, 2004; Mondadori (worldwide Spanish), 2008 (567 pp.);
El discurso vacío, Uruguay: Trilce, 1996; Spain: Mondadori, Caballo de Troya, 2007;
Debolsillo, 2008; Argentina: Mondadori, 2011 (205 pp.);
Dejen todo en mis manos, a mock detective novel, Argentina: Random House Mondadori;
Spain: Caballo de Troya, 2007 (121 pp.);
La banda del ciempies, Argentina: Random House Mondadori, 2010 (190 pp.);
Nick Carter, a parody of the cop novel, even the superhero genre, Argentina: Ediciones Trilce,
1996 (93 pp.), Random House Mondadori, 2009 (150 pp.);
the triology: El lugar, (160 pp.), Netherlands: MMIT Publishing, BananaFish; La ciudad (200
pp.); Paris (155 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
35
Luisgé Martín
literary autobiography
El amor del revés (Love Upside Down)
This is the soulful autobiography of a young boy who suddenly discovers that he
is infected by a malignant illness: homosexuality. It is also the portrait of a
society infected by intolerance and prejudice, searching for imaginary illnesses
to delimit its own moral territory. The author tells his very own story with a
disarming, sometimes hurtful sincerity: the discovery of his sexual condition,
psychological issues which arouse from his maladjustment, the Conductual
therapy he had to undergo, his introduction to sex, love affairs, his first contact
with the LGBT world and his late discovery of happiness.
Spain: Anagrama, 2016
other works: La vida equivocada, Spain: Anagrama 2015; Todos los crimenes se cometen por
amor, Spain: Salto de Página, 2013; La misma ciudad, Spain: Anagrama, 2013 (120 pp.); Las
manos cortadas, Spain: Alfaguara, 2009; Donde el silencio, Spain: Imagine Press Ediciones,
2013 (Premio Llanes de viajes, 2013); La mujer de sombra, Spain: Anagrama, 2012
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
Ronaldo Menéndez
La casa y la isla (The House and the Island)
Cuba
As teenagers, Anabela and Rebeca share a secret of love and betrayal. Decades
later, their paths cross again thanks to a young revolutionary Cuban doctor,
who has decided never to practice nor to ever leave his house again. This
isolation becomes the core of a frenetic story, which combines the biographies
of these three characters. This is the post Cuban revolutionary novel that hasn’t
been written yet: a humourous, psychological drama, containing overflowing
passion, an absolute must to understand Cuba of the transition. Fast paced, it
provides a deeper understanding of Cuban’s complex reality.
Spain: Alianza de Novelas, to be published November 2016
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
36
Clara Obligado
Petrarca para viajeros (Petrarca for Travellers)
During an ordinary summer somewhere in Europe, two teenagers meet at a train
station and start a journey that will turn their lives around. They need each
other. They cross each other’s way. They dream. Reality is confronted with
idealization, art with life, and the past of Europe with its present. It is a love
story as well as a reflection about what is visual but cannot be seen, the history
of a continent and its current tensions.
Spain: Pre-textos, 2016
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Pre-textos.
Ernesto Pérez Zúñiga
No cantaremos en tierra de extraños (We Shall not Sing on Foreigner’s Land)
In Autumn 1944, two survivors meet at the Toulouse Varsovia Hospital in
France. Manuel Juanmaría, obsessed with old Western movies, dreams about a
woman left behind in Spain. Ramón Montenegro, head-sergeant of the “Nueve”
that liberated Paris, makes an odd proposition: “Now that we’ve lost a country,
why don’t we save a person.” This is how the stirring adventure of two
unforgettable protagonists begins, a disturbing story of love and loyalty, with a
tearing plot full of mysterious encounters.
Spain: Galaxia Gutenberg, September 2016 (300 pp.)
other works: Santo Diablo, Spain: Kailas, 2004 (408 pp.); El segundo círculo, Spain: Algaida,
2007 (336 pp.); El juego del mono, Spain: Alianza, 2011 (320 pp.); La fuga del maestro Tartini,
Spain: Alianza, 2013 (448 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
37
Ángela PradelliEl sol detrás el limonero (The Sun Behind the Lemontree)
Ángela Pradelli retraces the life of her grandfather back to her family’s roots in
Peli, Italy, searching for secrets that have never been explained. She follows his
path through the mountains of the little Italian village, from where her
grandfather left for Argentina after the war, carrying with her several letters he
wrote to his younger brother from Burzaco in the south of Argentina. Among the
landscape and beneath the sky her grandfather missed so badly, his granddaughter
starts writing to rediscover faces, secret paths and sensations that have been long
forgotten. This novel cannot be assigned to a specific genre: it is free verse,
poetic chronicle, initiation journey and a collection of letters at the same time. The author
combines all these elements masterly to create her very own personal but also universal history.
Argentina: El bien del Sauce, 2016 (128 pp.)
El lugar del padre (Father’s Place) The first-person narrator is watching
Ramón, the neighbour, who is trying to cut down the tree in front of his house.
Ramon was the best friend of her father, who has just died. The father is the
blank space in both their lives, present and absent at the same time. Ramón and
the narrator begin to exchange memories of their dead father and friend. Apart
from taking care of each other in this difficult situation, they sometimes end up
just facing each other helplessly. Both have quite different ways to deal with
the loss, which makes the readers smile and leaves them thoughtful.
Argentina: Alfaguara, 2004 (163 pp.); Switzerland: Rotpunktverlag, 2012
Amigas mías (Friends of mine)
Buenos Aires, December 30th: A woman briefly glances in the mirror before
leaving the house to meet up with her friends for dinner. Olga, Ema, Patricia and
her: December 30th has always been reserved for the four of them – and just for
them. But this year everything is different: One of them is missing.
In her sensitive choral novel, Ángela Pradelli discovers the mysterious,
unconditional nature of a lifelong friendship.
Argentina: Emecé, 2002 (231 pp.); USA: Latin American Literary Review
Press, 2012; Switzerland: Rotpunktverlag, 2014
other works: Combi, Argentina: Emecé Editores 2008; 3- Turdera, Argentina: Emecé, 2003;
En mi nombre / Historias de identidades restituidas, Argentina: Paidós 2014
SvH Literarische Agentur
38
Cristina Redondo Alonso
Aspereza (Roughness)
Aspereza is the story of an endless escape: Coming from a broken home, after
travelling to Los Angeles and many tours through Madrid’s nightlife, after
becoming a well-known poet, Olivia goes to Canada, to take care of her deceased
lover’s daughter. But she cannot deny her roots and will always be surrounded by
roughness, being the center of a fragile and brittle environment, banned from her
own home.
Spain: Catedral, November 2016
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
Yolanda Reyes
Qué raro que me llame Federico (It’s Weird that my Name is Federico)
Belén feels the profound desire of being a mother, and after several failed
attempts to get pregnant, opts for the path of adoption. This is the story of her
decision and of the complex and brave process through which she supports her
motherhood. It is as well the story of her son, Federico. A young photographer,
who, under the pretext of an artistic project, returns to Colombia to track his
origins and to learn who he really is. It is the story of them both, of a mother and
a son who, through their isolated journeys, form a bond that proves to go beyond
what is biological.
Colombia: Alfaguara, 2016 (199 pp.)
Pasajera en tránsito (In Transit)
The story of a brittle love-affair in Madrid at the beginning of the eighties that thrives
on Pessoa’s poems, on authors from the Latin American boom, on the passion for
movies, subtly framed by the political situation of the countries that are brought
together in this novel: The ending military dictatorship in Argentina, the Falklands
War and the “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo”; the “destape español” and socialism’s
triumph, as well as Colombia and its “Security Statute”.
Columbia: Alfaguara, 2006 (326 pp.); Debolsillo, 2015 (paperback)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
39
Giovanna Rivero
Para comerte mejor (To Eat you Better)
short stories
One has to go where no one else dares to go, says one of the characters, and this is
the obsession in these stories. We have to go down to the channel, to the lodge, to
cross the mountain and see these poisoned, injected, drugged bodies, these hungry
raw materials, these knocked-up girls, these suicides, these skeletons in love. Here
people die, or are about to die or belong to another world. But these sacrificed
bodies are still sexual, tempting and fantastic, because they are free, hence this
radicalness is also political. Or as the author herself puts it: “A dark, total vibration
that really gets to you and makes you want to cry.”
USA: Sudaquia editorial, 2015 (231 pp.)
other works: 98 segundos sin sombra, Spain: Caballo de Troya, 2014; Tukzon, Bolivia: Ed. La
Hoguera, 2008; Niñas y detectives, Spain: Bartleby, 2009; Las Camaleonas, Bolivia: Ed. La
Hoguera, 2001 and 2009
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
José Andrés Rojo
Camino a Trinidad (The Way to Trinidad)
The narrator returns wants to reconstruct the journey he undertook on the Amazon
in 1977, from Puerto Villarroel to Trinidad. A few years ago, the friend who
travelled with him disappeared in the Caribbean. So he follows their old route, on
which he read Frantz Fannon’s The Wretched of the Earth, discovered Nietzsche’s
work, and never stopped thinking about changing the world radically. On the way
he encounters a life destroyed by drugs and another one fractured by suicide, the
failed adventure of the guerrilla from Teoponte, the story of his grandmother and
her brother-in-law’s passionate journalistic disputes next to submerging into the
sad circumstances that lead Nietzsche to write Thus Spoke Zarathustra, shortly
after the breakup with Lou von Salomé. Finally, the journey reveals the small margin in which
every individual manoeuvres given the weight and influence of every epoch’s spirit.
Spain: Pre-textos, 2016
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Pre-textos.
40
Jesús Ruiz Mantilla
Hotel transición (Hotel Transition)
transitional Spain
Chucho grows up in a hotel run by his mother Rocío, where eccentric and
mysterious characters are residing, whereas the country bids farewell to Franco’s
dictatorship on its way to democracy and liberty. Chucho’s adolescence gets
interwoven with the events that are indispensable for contemporary Spain:
Franco’s death or the coup of February 23rd. Watergate, legalization of the
Spanish communist party, the deaths of Mao, John Lennon or Adolfo Suárez here
go together with the fascination for TV series such as “Bonanza” or more recent
ones like “Mad men”. Satirical but hopeful, this novel creates a portrayal of
Spanish contemporary history.
Spain: Alianza, 2016 (272 pp.)
Winner of the Unicaja Fernando Quiñones Award 2016
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
Fedosy Santaella
Los nombres (Names)
We are living on the surface of our names, as if there was nothing more to say. But
names can offer us so much more. This book tells us the stories behind some of
them: It tells us about the life of a Cossack who was the captain of the tsars army;
about the avatars of a Ukrainian grandfather who tells incredible fantastic stories;
about the discovery of a Persian poet and his monumental work; about the
memories of a Father similar to Stan Laurel; as well as the epic book of an author
who relates a journey through literature, history, and nostalgia.
Spain: Pre-textos, 2016 (176 pp.)
El dedo de David Lynch (David Lynch’s Finger)
One night, while walking along the beach in Chirimena and selling rummage,
Mariana and Arturo discover an amputated finger. High on weed, they keep it.
From this point, the novel digs deeper into the past of its protagonists: a retired
police officer now owning a small kiosk at the beach, and a dying father who
travels to Chirimena with his son in a kind of road movie-narration, and others.
This literary novel combines magic realism with elements of the noir.
Spain: Pre-textos, 2015 (272 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Pre-textos.
41
Javier Vásconez
Hoteles del silencio (Hotels of Silence)
Is there anything more disturbing than a crying child breaking a hotel’s silence
in the middle of the night? This novel interweaves various tales of a daunting
humanity. Set in a city troubled by a terrifying series of abductions and
murders, awful crimes, all victims being children, its most helpless and
vulnerable inhabitants. The protagonists of Vásconez’ works are searching for
love and for themselves. Diving in the genre of crime fiction, the theme that
guides through Hoteles de silencio is an exploration of tension and suspense
that sets free a story of love and jealousy between young Loreta and Jorge
Villamar, owner of the stationary shop “Paris”. This intriguing and
hypnotizing story leaves the reader with a feeling of loneliness, lunacy and horror.
Spain: Pre-textos, 2016 (336 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Pre-textos.
Aurora Venturini
Cuentos secretos (Secret Stories)
This selection of short stories until now unknown includes a big part of the literary
and personal history of an incomparable autor. With a wise and powerful prose,
these short stories are inspired by memory and by the extraordinary atmospheres
that Venturini knows to create and illuminate with expertise.
Spain: Penguin Random House, 2015 (250 pp.)
other works: Eva, Alfa y Omega (Eva, Alpha and Omega) and Pogrom del
cabecita negra (Pogrom of the Cabecita Negra), Argentina: Sudamericana, 2014;
Los rieles (The Rails), short stories, Argentina: Mondadori, 2013; El marido de
mi madrasta (The Husband of my Step Mother), short stories, Argentina: Mondadori, 2012; Las
primas (The Cousins), Argentina: Mondadori, 2008; Spain: Random House Mondadori (Caballo
de Troya Collection), 2010 (192 pp.); France: Robert Laffont, 2010; Italy: Salani, 2010;
Nosotros, los Caserta (We, the Caserta), Argentina: Ediciones Pueblo Entero, 1992; Spain:
Random House Mondadori, 2011 (176 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
42
Pablo Yoiris
Usted está aquí (You Are Here)
Told in the second person, this novel leads us through the protagonist’s life. The
narrator focuses on the present where David finds himself in detention for
allegedly killing his mother.
Starting at his birth, under precarious circumstances and to a mother who regards
him as a burden, we follow David’s path. After he manages to escape from a
children's home, he enters a world of crime, joining a gang of thieves. David
moves up from pickpocketing to more complex jobs and rises through the ranks.
The leader, Simón, is interested in his people receiving a well-rounded education
and David continues his secondary schooling. He leads a double life. On the one hand, he is a
normal student; on the other hand, he is a merciless criminal capable of killing if necessary.
Being obsessed with the mother who abandoned him, he succeeds in locating her many years
later. David wants and needs to understand, and for this reason gets even closer to her – so close,
that at a certain point he can no longer keep his distance.
Argentina: Raíz de Dos, 2016 (180 pp.)
Winner of the 2015 Córdoba Mata Prize.
Resnik
In the lawless town of Tierra Nueva, what is a crime and what is not depends on
the occasion. In Tierra Nueva, bullets whiz through the air. Protests intensify, the
emergency room-staff at the hospital where Resnik, the main character, works,
never rests. Resnik is pulled out of his comfort zone by unsuspected, unknown
forces. His well-organized world begins to lose its structure and an enigmatic
disappearance leads him to wonder why he has always been more fortunate than
others.
Yoiris combines the structure of a crime novel with narrative experimentation to
offer us a story about the links between the state and crime that brings numerous voices together.
An interesting tale, combining a strong narrative technique, the psychological novel, and the
“roman à these” with the genre of noir.
Colombia: Planeta, 2015 (223 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
43
NON-FICTION
ESSAYS / HISTORICAL & POLITICAL NON-FICTION
Selva Almada
Chicas muertas (Dead Girls)
“Three girls from the countryside, murdered in the 1980s. Three unpunished
murders, committed when feminicide as a term was still unknown.”
Three murder victims among hundreds, who neither suffice for the front page of
the newspaper nor get the attention of the Buenos Aires TV cameras. Three cases
that are treated differently: They are announced on the radio, the newspapers
shortly refer to them and someone remembers them in a conversation. Three
crimes that happened in Argentina when the country celebrated the return to
democracy. Three dead girls without culprits. The pure prose of Selva Almada
shows the invisible in the dark. It is capable of letting the everyday forms of violence against girls
and women transition into an intensive and lively plot. With this book, the author again pursues a
totally new course in Latin American literature.
Argentina: Literatura Mondadori, 2014 (192 pp.), France: Éditions Métalié
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
Esther Andradi
Mi Berlín. Crónicas de una ciudad mutante (My Berlin. Chronicles from a Mutant City)
This book tells the story of Berlin and its inhabitants, of migration, urban change,
the babel of cultures on both sides of the wall. All this influenced the city that still
carries the memories of the Holocaust and the barbarity.
The book consists of 34 chronicles, published by Esther Andradi between 1983
and 2014 in different newspapers and magazines in Peru, Argentina, Spain, and
Mexico. Each one of them is a snapshot of the changes in the daily life of the
cosmopolitan metropolis Berlin before, during and after the fall of the wall that
separated east and west.
Spain: Mirada Malva, 2015, (208pp.), Germany: Klak Verlag
other works: Berlín es un cuento (Berlin is a Story), Argentina: Alción Editora, 2009 (213 pp.)
SvH Literarische Agentur
44
María Teresa Andruetto
La lectura, otra revolución (Reading, another Revolution)
essay
The question is not whether nowadays there are more readers or less, but what to do
to improve the quality of readers themselves. A task that not only involves families
and schools, as reading environments where we can grow a conscience about
ourselves, but also engages writers and publishers. Through their jobs, they create
different kinds of readers, depending on how they resist or comply with the demand
of a single way of telling. According to this, as Andruetto argues, literature is
capable of guiding readers through risks, struggles and the difficult task of facing
their failures. During the act of reading, a book becomes a living entity; it poses questions,
disturbs us and teaches us to look beyond what we know about ourselves. These books ask for a
reader who understands that the only freedom of thought is the freedom we earn. This is a
revolution everyone can start while reading. In these essays – most of them from lectures, forums
and conferences about children’s and young adult’s literature and the promoting of reading – the
author traces different paths to the understanding of what reading means nowadays.
Argentina: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2014 (190 pp.); Portugal: Edições Sesc
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights CBQ agencia literaria.
Joke Hermsen
Kairos. En nieuwe bevlogenheid (Kairos. A new engangement)
Joke Hermsen makes a passionate plea for a new kind of engagement, one that
will inspire us to find new ways of ‘wishful thinking’ to help put the economic
and ecological crisis behind us. Referencing the philosophical works of
Hannah Arendt, Tomas Sedlacek and Ernst Bloch, Hermsen makes clear that
the human condition is on the one hand characterized by ‘initium’, that we are
and should be ‘starters’ of new initiatives, and on the other hand by empathy.
After decades of nihilism and cynicism, the time has come for the homo
economicus to become a homo empathicus, embracing engagement,
enthusiasm and inspiration as their leading principles.
‘A brilliant series of essays from Joke Hermsen about the necessityof quality time.’ –
Vrij Nederland
Netherlands: Arbeiderspers, 2015
45
Joke Hermsen
Stil de tijd (Time on our side)
More than 45.000 copies sold in the Netherlands
The clock was originally meant to help us organize work, transport and
trade. “By far the most artificial of all our inventions” W.G. Sebald called it.
Nowadays it rules our entire lives and this book is a fervent plea to free
ourselves from the dictatorship of the clock and find a new balance to go
back to doing nothing, to embrace boredom and repose. In her search for the
experience of time Joke hermsen draws upon a wide range of writers and
thinkers, from the ancient worls to the present. Joke hermsen intersperses
her manifesto with extracts from the diaries.
Shortlisted for the Sokrates – Best Philosophie Book of the Year Prize
Jan Hanlo Essay Prize 2010
Netherlands: Arbeiderspers 2010
German and Spanish translation rights. All other rights Arbeiderspers.
Jesús Ruiz Mantilla
Contar la música (Recounting Music)
essay
Jesús Ruiz Mantilla has been a music columnist for El País for over two
decades. In this essay, various well-known characters, creators and performers,
give us an insight into their experience with music. Interviews with great
conductors of our time, including Daniel Baremboim, Claudio Abbado, Zubin
Metha, Riccardo Muti and Gustavo Dudamel, pianists like Brendel, Pollini,
Zimerman, Sokolov and Maria Joao Pires, along with the in-depth knowledge of
phenomena such as José Antonio Abreu’s Venezuelan youth orchestra network,
the West-Eastern Divan orchestra in which Palestinian and Israeli musicians
perform together, as well as the emergence of Chinese pianists, enable us to
understand the fascinating, creative, current scene of classical music.
Spain: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2015 (399 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights DOS PASSOS agencia literaria.
46
GENERAL NON-FICTION / SELF-HELP GUIDES
Bom & Bon
Pequeñas ideas antes de vivir en pareja (Small Thoughts Before Moving in Together)
humour
“Anyone who says living with their couple is absolute perfection is either a
Martian or doesn’t dare to say what really happens inside their walls. The moment
you move in with someone, you start saying everything in plural, even if you’re
not enforcing anything. There must be situations in which you get mad or at least
startled –but for those moments of ‘What am I doing here? Help!’, we bring our
insight and some ideas to help coexist…”
Spain: Ediciones Maeva, 2016 (112 pp.)
Pequeñas ideas antes de ser mamá (Small Thoughts Before Becoming a Mum)
It is clear that being a mother is a turning-point in the life of a woman. Everything
changes: your schedule, your marriage, your wardrobe, your kitchen, your
sleeping habits... Your life becomes a rollercoaster of emotions and changes! The
authors have written and illustrated this book to bring a smile on the faces of
women who have had the experiences explained in it, and the ones who haven’t
experienced it yet.
Spain: Maeva, 2015 (112 pp.); Greece: Harlenic Hellas; Brazil: Sextante;
Portugal: Planeta Manuscrito
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
47
Pancho Campo
¡Inspírate! (Be Inspired!)
coaching
This text is based on the experience of Pancho Campo, a businessman,
promoter of large events, former professional athlete, coach and captain of the
Olympic tennis players. It is also based on the analysis of elite athletes, artists
of the highest level, business and political leaders, with whom Campo has
worked in the past 30 years: Al Gore, Kofi Annan, the Emir of Qatar, Andre
Agassi, Stefan Edberg, Sting, Pink Floyd, Frank de la Jungla or Enrique
Iglesias, to name but a few.
Pancho Campo is an expert in marketing and event management (sports,
concerts, etc.). At present, he is the CEO of Chrand Marketing & Events. He is
a charismatic speaker, for instance about marketing or the environment. But the focus of his most
recent conferences has been motivation and stress management, taking as case studies the
political leaders, artists, and sportsmen with whom he has worked, analyzing how they manage to
achieve the best results even in difficult times.
Spain: Suma de letras, 2016
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Montse Domènech
La vacuna contra el miedo (Vaccination against Fear)
This book is addressed to all families with children of any age. Childhood fears are a
natural feeling that supports building up the human mind, since they help children
develop their imagination, learn how to face problems and protect themselves from
danger. These fears can turn into a real disorder for parents. This book offers parents
a simple and practical method to face the issue of childhood fears.
Spain: Plaza & Janés (Spanish and Catalan), 2016 (144 pp.), Russia: Alpina
other works: Edúcame bien (Educate me well), Spain: Penguin Random House, 2015 (192 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
48
Mónica Esgueva
Mindfulness
selfhelp and coaching
Did you know that distractions can take more than two hours of our day? In the
era of the dispersion, Mónica Esgueva proposes mindfulness to keep our focus
and enjoy the here and now. After twenty years in the world of meditation, the
author presents a practical guide that collects all her knowledge as a specialist. It
not only introduces us to the mindfulness in a straight forward way, it also
proposes exercises that will help us improve our concentration, free us from any
worries and enjoy life without feelings that elude us.
Spain: Zenith, 2016 (256 pp.)
other works: Mensajes para el alma (Messages for the Soul), Spain: Paidós, 2014 (240 pp.); 10
claves para alcanzar tus sueños (10 Steps to Fulfill your Dreams), Spain: Paidós, 2015 (208 pp.);
Portugal: Self Desenvolvimiento Pessoal
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Eduard Estivill
Nuestro bebé (Our Baby)
In this book, parents will discover what the first and wonderful days and months
of their baby’s life are like, the most decisive period of parenting. The object of
the authors is to scan the quick physical, emotional and intellectual changes of the
little one, which also affect the adults, both individually and as a couple. With this
purpose, they’ve added the doctor’s and psychologist’s experiences in the Estivill
Clinic to the opinions of international experts.
Spain: Editorial Bruño, to be published.
Why this author? Dr. Estivill has sold more than 1.5 milion books worldwide.
He has been translated into more than 20 languages.
other works: Niños descansados, ninos felices; A dormir!; A comer!, with Montse Domènech,
Que no te quiten el sueño, Dormir sin descanso; El camino del buen sueño; Dormir bien para
vivir más, recetas para dormir bien; Dormir bien para Dummies, Las anécdotas del Dr. Estivill;
Eduard Estivill & Dr. Gonzalo Pin: Pediatría con sentido común
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
49
Dra. Montse Folch
La dieta de los colores (The Colour Diet)
health / diet
Health, beauty, comfort, feeling better in our body, rejuvenated and more energetic,
those are the main goals we set for ourselves when we start a new diet. Even though
they are reasons good enough to eat healthy for the rest of our lives, the truth is that
we still end up going back to our old habits.
To our daily circumstances (little time to buy groceries and to cook, eating out,
etc.), we have to add diets that often require a high level of sacrifice and that we
feel are too restrictive – so we quit. What makes the color diet so simple and
diverse is that one of its key principles is to turn food into an act of pleasure.
The menu of this diet is divided in four colors: red for proteins, both from vegetables and
animals; green for vegetables; yellow for sugar and for carbohydrates and brown for fats. And
blue will identify the group of liquids and dressings.
Spain: to be published by Penguin Random House (Catalan and Spanish)
other works: La enzima mediterránea (9,000 copies sold), Spain: Planeta (Spanish), Columna
Edicions (Catalan), Portugal: Self Desenvolvimiento Pessoal
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Gaspar Hernàndez
No soy de este mundo (I am not from this World)
Here’s a true diary that seems to belong to a fictional character. The author has
spent two years following a Catalan man who travels around the world saying
that “nothing is real” and “we live in a dream”. His name is Enric Corbera, he
fills up concert halls in Spain and Latin America and his YouTube videos have hit
millions of views. What’s behind the Corbera phenomenon? These questions fill
up the book, which shows a way of seeing life that is radically different to others.
A diary about what’s spiritual and what’s non-tangible.
Spain: Ediciones B (Spanish and Catalan), 2016 (352 pp.)
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
50
Pilar Jericó
¿Y si realmente pudieras? (And if you really could?)
self-help and coaching
Determination = Wish + Conviction (in that order).
This formula is what Pilar Jericó’s new book is based on, as a good mentor,
she’ll guide the reader through the path of motivation. The path has 6 phases: 1.
Saying no to hidden benefits; 2. Identifying what you want to say (or what you
don’t want to say); 3. Giving your dream a shape; 4. Building a specific and
personalized strategy; 5. Looking for the necessary resources and 6. Persistence.
Supported by many examples and case studies, the popular coach does an
excellent job in this simple but deep book in which the readers will find strength
and wisdom.
Spain: Alienta, 2016 (169 pp.)
other works: No miedo, Spain: Alienta; English rights: Palgrave Macmillan
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
Allan Percy
Shakespeare para enamorados (Shakespeare for Lovers)
This book is a Shakesperian therapy for the longing heart. Among all the great
authors in world literature, none studied the mysteries of love in such depth and
from such a lucid perspective as William Shakespeare. His works are still a
powerful tool to understand the boundless secrets of our heart. From love at first
sight to disappointment, from the first kiss to impossible love, this book draws the
Shakespearian science of love from the stage and verse anthologies in order to
answer questions such as: How may the longing heart be treated? Can someone
live a lifelong romance? What is the secret to seduction? How to fight against
jealousy? It is a fresh and incredibly inspiring book for those who take love very serious.
Spain: Penguin Random House 2015 (160 pp.)
other works: Einstein para despistados, Spain: Debolsillo, 2014 (192 pp.); Kafka para
agobiados, Spain: Debolsillo, 2012 (137 pp.); Nietzsche para estresados, Spain: Debolsillo,
2009 (128 pp.)
Series sold to: Portugal: Marcador; Romania: Editura Herald; Greece: Patakis; Russia: Eksmo;
Brazil: Sextante; Serbia: Krea vni Centar; Turkey: Pena Yayinlari
German and Dutch translation rights. All other rights Sandra Bruna agencia literaria.
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