Frankfurt, Day 2 — Much Longer than the First

Today was a much livelier day at the fair than yesterday . . . After walking through the field of manure and just missing our train, we had a very active, interesting day of appointments.

Looks like we’ll be publishing a number of Catalan books, we met with an amazing Slovenian publisher (if you really want to publish the absolute cream of the crop in world literature, it pays to do it in a country with very little competition—you can have all the major books/authors on your list), and at the Frankfurter Hof, we met some amazing agents (representing South African and Spanish/Catalan authors) and a Swedish woman who was searching for a party to “get liberal” at.

The only thing that sucked is Hall 8. Hall 8 is the US/UK Hall and is simply atrocious. It’s the only hall where you have to let someone search your bag—and I mean really search—to get in, all the while standing next to the “American Hot Dog” stand. Seriously—I even have a picture of E.J. buying a Coke to prove it.

I think Hall 8 is where the buzz is generated though. I have to say, it is sort of sad though. Most of the foreign halls are half-empty, but that’s where all the great work is, and meeting with foreign publishers is kind of the purpose of the fair . . . HarperCollins was beseiged today though after the Doris Lessing-Nobel Prize announcement was made.

I’m not sure we’re going to make it tomorrow to the fair, since the German rail workers are going on strike . . . Instead we’ll be stuck in Morfelden, dreaming about the Lithuanian books we could’ve found out about, and the Tropen Verlag dance party . . . (The tradition big party—the Eichborn dance party—was canceled this year, since they would’ve been restricted to only 400 guests instead of the normal 1,000.)

Getting back to books for a minute, the new Japanese Literature Publishing Project list is out and looks really interesting, and the Italian publisher Bompiani is doing a lot of great stuff, including Sergio Claudio Perroni’s Nobody Dies, which sounds brilliant, like a 21st-Century Calvino.

Oh, and there was more talk of the Rick Ankiel bio, and a blank check . . .