Deals

MY HOLOCAUST by Tova Reich — MY HOLOCAUST, a fourth novel by Tova Reich, a satire in the spirit of Jonathan Swift and George Orwell, that is deeply cutting and often hilarious, taking on nothing less than the exploitation of the Holocaust memory and our rivalrous culture of victimization, to Claire Wachtel of Harper Collins in a very nice deal by agent Marly Rusoff (World but Germany)

The Camel Bookmobile, foreign rights, Italy — Italian rights to Masha Hamilton’s novel THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE which tells the story of an idealistic American librarian who works for a relief organization that sends books on the backs of camels to nomadic tribes in Kenya, to Garzanti’s Marie Louise Zarmanian at auction by Michael Radulescu for Marly Rusoff & Associates, Inc.

HEXE by Erika Mailman — HEXE, a darkly disturbing novel by Erika Mailman that tells the story of a witch trial during a harsh winter in a small German town in 1487, using the lives of one family and one village to explore the medieval struggle between Christianity and pagan traditions of the past, to Crown editor Allison McCabe in a good deal by agent Marly Rusoff (North American)

LAST ONE IN by Nicholas Kulish — LAST ONE IN by journalist Nicholas Kulish, in which a New York City tabloid’s war correspondent is hit by a delivery truck in Manhattan just as the war in Iraq is about to begin, leaving the paper’s editor to make a last minute decision to send their gossip columnist to join the Marines in his place, to Lee Boudreaux of Ecco/Harper by agent Marly Rusoff. (NA), film Rights sold to Mike Deluca for Columbia pictures by Shari Smiley of CAA

THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE, foreign rights, The Netherlands — Dutch rights to Masha Hamilton’s novel THE CAMEL BOOKMOBILE which tells the story of an idealistic American librarian who works for a relief organization that sends books on the backs of camels to nomadic tribes in Kenya, to Unieboek’s Heleen Buth at auction, by Jacqueline LeDonne for Marly Rusoff & Associates, Inc.

HarperCollins’s Camel — Masha Hamilton, author of Staircase of a Thousand Steps and The Distance Between Us, has sold her third novel, The Camel Bookmobile, to Harper’s Jonathan Burnham and Claire Wachtel via agent Marly Rusoff. Burnham and Wachtel acquired world English rights for low six figures. The novel tells the story of an idealistic American librarian who leaves Brooklyn to work in Africa for a relief organization that sends books on the backs of camels to remote villages, setting off a feud among a nomadic tribe the program aims to help. Hamilton lives in New York, where she writes for the Associated Press and teaches creative writing.

Turkish novelist Elif Shafak’s second English language novel, THE BASTARD OF ISTANBUL, which tells the tale of two families, an exiled Armenian family living in San Francisco and the Kazancis of Istanbul, whose contemporary stories conjoin through a family secret that began with the 1915 massacre of Armenians by the Turks and played out in the lives of their daughters today, to Paul Slovak at Viking in a preempt by agent Marly Rusoff (NA)

THE KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL by Deborah Rodriquez, a remarkable portrait of cultures encountering each other as American hairdresser Rodriquez brings readers an intimate look into the lives of the women of Afghanistan, using unforgettable stories taken from her experiences as founder of a beauty school she established to help Afghan women learn a trade, to Random House executive Jane von Mehren in a good deal by agent Marly Rusoff (World but Germany)

SO GREAT A NOISE: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, and the End of Enlightenment,” by professors Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott, which vividly examines the failed friendship between two of the eighteenth-century’s greatest thinkers, exploring how their feud tested the basis of their philosophies and marked the end of the Enlightenment era, in a nice deal to W.W. Norton editor Alane Mason by agent Marly Rusoff (NA)

French rights to THE DIET CODE: Revolutionary Secrets of DaVinci and the Golden Ratio by Stephen Lanzalotta (formerly The Baker’s Code) which blends science and Renaissance lore with the mathematical principles that govern life and beauty in a book that presents the benefits of a healthful Mediterranean diet that honors carbs to Solar at auction by Anna Jarota of Anna Jarota Agency on behalf of Marly Rusoff & Associates, Inc.