Tom Gatti
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The celebs: Memoirs from Roger Moore, Keith Richards and Jerry Hall are all on sale. Moore’s as-yet-unwritten book has a working title of My Word is My Bond and bidding for it is expected to reach £2m. Super-agent Ed Victor is only letting a favoured few publishers bid for Keith Richards’ book: those left out are grumbling in the aisles.
The feud: Appointing Catalonia as Guest of Honour for the Frankfurt Book Fair has caused no end of controversy: the regional government in Barcelona – fiercely protective of its autonomy – decided to invite only authors writing in Catalan, thereby excluding a whole group of popular Spanish-language writers from the region, such as Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow of the Wind). After a lot of pressure, the government relented, only to have the angry Spanish authors turn their invitations down. The director of the fair, Juergen Boos, said, “We made some calls last week, but nothing happened. It’s very disappointing that the Spanish authors didn’t come, and it’s a pity that this political dispute is overshadowing the Catalan Culture part of the fair.”
The discovery: Resistance by Àgnes Humbert is a “real-life” version of Iréne Nèmirovsky’s posthumous bestseller Suite Française, according to Bloomsbury editor-in-chief Alexandra Pringle. Bloomsbury has just acquired world translation rights to the wartime diary of a Paris intellectual who was instrumental in the resistance against German occupation during the Second World War. The book was first published in France in 1946 and will appear in English in autumn next year.
The empty chair: The new boss of the literary agency PFD, Caroline Michel, did not get off to a very good start: since her arrival last month 23 agents have either been fired or resigned. Her absence at the book fair has been noted, and suggests further tremors at PFD: yesterday the rumour was that Michel had abandoned her flight and hotel booking, holing herself up in the office and not returning calls.
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