Déluge: The Bad, the Beautiful and the Good
Before he was executed, King Louis XV1 of France could not have been blamed for saying, "Après Nous Le Déluge." He would have been echoing the words attributed to Madame de Pompadour. Certainly, after the King's head rolled into the well-used and rather-stained basket, the country became a mess until Napoleon sorted it out. He, in turn, was sorted out by Wellington and others. But despite the great success of Waterloo, "Déluge" was bad. Louis seems to have been quite a nice man, if a little whimpish and the beautiful Marie Antoinette loved pretty clothes and cake (and she wasn't even French). What a waste.
From our point of view, "Déluge" is good and Proverse is now experiencing it. We are receiving many promising manuscripts, although we're still waiting for a new interpretation of the French Revolution. Perhaps our friends at the Alliance Française will come up with something. Time for a new angle.
New Books
Meanwhile, from what we read and hear, readers are enjoying Caleb Kavon's ground-breaking The Monkey in Me published by Proverse on 11 March this year. In a recent review, the book was described as "a dynamic exploitation of human conscience in today's modern and economically aware Hong Kong", a book that "looks forward to the personal and societal changes that must be made as the recession looms and new cultural trends develop." But, above all, this is a "witty, intelligent and insightful novel." A jolly good read!
In fact, Proverse readers are in for a treat this Spring. There is no need to feel deprived when the last page of The Monkey in Me has been turned. Simply go straight to our successful Wannabe Backpackers by Gerald Yeung. The book has been very well reviewed as conveying "the precarious state of a young man posed between a protected childhood and imminent independence as an adult, providing fabulous insights for parents into what's really going on in a teen's mind. Encounters with girls, 'weird' food and clubbing in a foreign language are balanced with budding understanding of the differences of other cultures and appreciation of their beauty."
Your writer can't pretend to understand the concept of "teenager," a term invented in the United States in the nineteen thirties. In fact to dub the backpackers "teenagers" would be to do them a disservice. This is rather a very lively and interesting book about the adventures of five mature young men in lands that were foreign to them.
The new Chinese translation of Gillian Bickley's, Moving House and Other Poems from Hong Kong, edited by Chief Translator, Tony Yip, is already expanding the readership of this collection which has been described as, "presenting bare, tight poetry, no idle words are allowed. Its vocabulary draws on the base language of essences and epiphanies. The chosen spare language is the perfect partner for this poetry of mature experience."
In preparation from Proverse
Watch out for three new books in the final stages of preparation, significant additions to our list.
First, the very exciting "Tightrope! -- A Bohemian Tale", the autobiographical novel of a well-known Czech writer, involved in film-making from her earliest childhood, in a country that was, for many years, reluctantly under Russian influence.
Second, "Gin's Tonic" is the real-life story of a female yachtswoman who braved torrid temperatures and dangerous typhoons to sail very great distances. For comfort, she was accompanied by a dog and a cat. The dog had problems. It kept sliding along the deck and, because of the slope, could not keep its leg up at important moments…She also had a cat which fell overboard. She wrote it off but was amazed to see it swimming furiously (breaststroke?) after the yacht. They hauled it aboard and it seemed not to have suffered from the experience. This happened twice more and each time the feline was rescued. Phelps couldn't have managed it twice and certainly not three times!
Third, Caleb Kavon's, "The Reluctant Terrorist", is a fine piece of writing which could well establish him as the new Le Carrè. This significant thriller is a superb follow-up to his successful, "The Monkey in Me: Confusion, Love and Hope under a Chinese Sky".
The Google Settlement
According to the Spring 2009 issue of "The Author", Google has settled with the Authors Guild of America. The nub of the case was Google's actions in digitizing tens of millions of books and making them available on-line. The settlement "includes the establishment of a Books Rights Registry (at Google's expense) controlled by authors and publishers; payment to authors for books digitized by Google before 5 January 2009 and arrangements under which Google can exploit certain future rights in those works (only in the USA) paying authors and publishers via the Registry". Proverse is busily registering all its titles.
Remember the Prize!
The deadline for registration for The Proverse Prize (30 May, 2009) is fast approaching. Readers will remember that this unique Prize is open to writers of NON-published work and the winner may also qualify to have her or his book published by Proverse, one of the fastest-growing publishers in Asia. A reminder. Details of the entry rules are given on our web-site: geocities.com/proversehk_proverse_prize
As regular readers will know, we are honoured to have several well-known writers (poets, novelists, academics) as advisers to The Proverse Prize. Among them are the Bahamian poet Marion Bethel and the Czech novelist, Olga Wallo.
A second edition of Ms Bethel's well-received collection of poems, "Guanahani, My Love", has just been published by the House of Nehesi Publishers. Bethel, a Cambridge-trained attorney in Nassau, is also a James Michener and Harvard University Fellow. Kamau Brathwaite, professor of literature at New York University, has said that her "Guanahani" poems are "entries into Caribbean magical realism" and this view has been confirmed by many other perceptive critics. Bethel's writings have appeared in "Lignum Vitae", "The Massachusetts Review" and the "Caribbean Writer". She has recited her poetry in Hong Kong, the Caribbean, South America, North America and Europe.
As mentioned above, Olga Wallo's crucially-acclaimed novel, "Tightrope! -- A Bohemian Tale", has now been translated into English and will be available from Proverse by the end of the year. Wallo is about to begin a tour of the United States to promote her book, a significant memoir of her life in a country dominated for many years by Russia. Readers interested in history will remember that Czech lands were ruled for centuries by the Austrian Habsburgs. In 1918, Czech lands were united with Slovakia to form a separate state. Germans occupied the country in 1938 until the end of the Second World War. Communist rule then followed until 1989. In 1993, Czechoslovakia divided itself and the independent states of the Czech Republic and the Republic of Slovakia were born. So far, so good. Olga Wallo reflects these traumatic political transformations and their impact on three generations of her family in her bitter-sweet book.
Have a good holiday weekend!
To go to the Proverse Hong Kong website: Proverse Hong Kong