Dutch courage

I can’t say yet if this year’s Book Fair will bring me any financial benefits, but it has at least brought me two very enjoyable lunches, today’s being in Chelsea with the renowned and charming Marga de Boer of Dutch publishers Luitingh-Sijthoff. As well as being one of Holland’s most influential editors, it turns out Marga is also a keen ice-skater and has a formidable knowledge of both Latin and Greek. Not for the first time this week, I find myself feeling a little like a cave-dwelling Philistine next to my host.

In Holland publishers have to get translations from English in particular done very quickly, because most Dutch people are perfectly willing and able to read English books in the original. Walk into an Amsterdam bookshop and you will find that only roughly half the fiction titles are actually in Dutch. In my case, The Einstein Girl, will be coming out just one month later than in the UK, which is something of a feat. I am delighted to find the Einstein artwork on the cover of the new catalogue (you can see it here: http://thiswriterstale.blogspot.com/2009/03/dutch-cover-story.html). Marga deliberately runs an eclectic and international list, with virtually no overlap in styles or themes: so I find my book unexpectedly rubbing shoulders with the latest from Patricia Cornwell, Danielle Steele, John Le Carré and Barbara Taylor Bradford.

Apparently the trade likes what she has done, and Marga is confident that Einstein will be decently stocked, which is about all I could ask for. On the other hand, she points out that there are difficulties in publicizing non-Dutch authors in Holland, and suggests I get busy on the Internet preparing all manner of material which must somehow be linked into the great global on-line cyber market in the sky. I must admit, this is not terribly much what I wanted to hear. (Not that I mind messing about with web sites and editing software. It’s just the time they eat up...) Momentarily daunted, I then make a hash of describing my next book again.

After lunch, I give Marga a lift to her hotel in Earl’s Court, where the serious action (for her, rather than me) begins tomorrow. There she will try to cram in several meetings per hour all day and much of the night, most of them under the hot lights of the exhibition centre. Hard work on the larynx, the memory and the ankles. I expect the skating helps.

The Book Fair hits town

Rain and emergency engineering works on my particular stretch of the District Line (timed to perfection by the evil geniuses at Transport for London), almost conspire to make me late today for lunch with my German publisher. Tina Arnold of DTV is over from Munich for the London Book Fair, which officially opens on Monday at Earl’s Court. Dagmer, her London scout, not only recommends books for her, it seems, but also restaurants; in this case, Moro in Exmouth Market. And a good recommendation it turns out to be. The lamb I have is really delicious. If it were a painting, I would frame it and hang it on a wall.

I have spoken to Tina on the phone, but this is the first time we’ve actually met. She turns out to be delightful and funny. She also seems to know a vast amount about Shakespeare (a few years back she sat through the RSC’s entire Henry VI cycle twice), added to which she speaks English slightly better than I do, which doesn’t really seem fair. I do manage to make a hash of describing the new book I've started working on - I really should practise these things - but otherwise the whole event is great fun.

Tina brings with her good news from the German market, namely that orders for all kinds of books are holding up very well; if anything, better than last year, and certainly better than expected. This may mean that the book market is largely recession-proof; on the other hand, it may just mean the recession hasn’t really arrived in Germany yet.

Meanwhile translation of The Einstein Girl continues apace. Apparently the translator lives in Berlin where most of the action of the book takes place. She has gone as far as to seek out certain of the key locations, most importantly Albert Einstein's summer house in Caputh, which is now open to the public. Now that's what I call dedication.