Jenne Casarotto, based in London, is one of the world’s top film and theater agents. Casarotto represents the cream of British writing and directing talent through her agency, Casarotto Ramsay & Associates. Her clients include theatrical lions like Sir David Hare, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Christopher Hampton and the estates of Tennessee Williams and Raold Dahl. Through her agency Casarotto Marsh, Jenne Casarotto supplies the film industry with top behind the scenes tech talent. Six degrees of separation. Casarotto’s affiliate agency in Los Angeles represents the academy award winning costumer designer, Yvonne Blake, who happens to be the sister of Juliet Blake, the talented producer who got my first novel, THE HUNDRED-FOOT JOURNEY, into active film production. Such a small world – when you are amongst The Luvvies, as the English call film and theater types.
This is all a very big wind up to say, Jenne Casarotto very rarely takes on books directly, so I am very lucky and privileged she has picked up BUDDHALAND BROOKLYN, my novel about a repressed Buddhist priest getting published by Scribner in the US on July 17. Jenne Casarotto will be representing my novel’s film rights, as co-agent with my primary agent, Richard Pine of InkWell Management.
The last time Casarotto Ramsay and InkWell joined forces like that on a book they produced something called THE DESCENDANTS, the academy award winning film written and directed by one of my all time favorite writer-directors, Alexander Payne, and starring, of course, the always watchable George Clooney.
As Reverend Oda might say, “I see. How interesting.”
Which is, of course, an absolute rave.
One of the finest publishers I came across when The Hundred-Foot Journey started its rollout across twenty-one territories around the globe, was Australia’s much-respected independent, Allen & Unwin. The firm was voted Australia’s Publisher of the Year in 2011.
I am not surprised Allen & Unwin got it’s 10th industry hat-tip. I found that right off the bat, everyone from Allen & Unwin’s managing director, Patrick Gallagher, to its charming publisher, Annette Barlow, put their weight behind my tale of the Haji family and powered my little book right through the bookshops of Australia.
It was seriously impressive to watch these publishing pros at work. What they accomplished with my novel in Australia and New Zealand speaks for itself, including the fact that Scribner in the US and Alma in the UK dropped their own The Hundred-Foot Journey covers to adopt Allen & Unwin’s stunning design. That’s the sincerest form of flattery.
So imagine my delight when I learned Allen & Unwin have signed up for round two of the Morais merry-go-round. My Australian publishers are publishing BUDDHALAND BROOKLYN in September of this year.
Woohooo! That means all my publishers in the US, UK, and Aus/NZ have come back for seconds – a huge vote of confidence, for which I am very grateful. Life can indeed be very good.
May they all be handsomely rewarded.
Anyone who has ever heard me read from The Hundred-Foot Journey knows how much fun I have acting out the voices of the Haji family. Particularly Big Abbas, Hassan’s father, with all his characteristic bluster.
So I am thrilled that my US publisher, Scribner, has done a deal with Blackstone Audio to come out with the audio versions of both Buddhaland Brooklyn and The Hundred-Foot Journey. Anyone who wants to pre-ordeer can do so by going directly to Blackstone Audio or through the usual suspects like Amazon, Powell’s, or Barnes & Noble.
It looks like the MP3 CD and the 7 CD audio set of Buddhaland Brooklyn will be first up, the emergence of Reverend Seido Oda’s voice and narrative timed to coincide with the book’s US and Canada release on July 17th. The Hundred-Foot Journey appears set for a later release. Still, better late than never and very sweet news.
Can’t wait to find out which actors Blackstone are hiring to read my little books.
I am delighted to announce that my UK publishers, the talented husband-and-wife team that built both Alma Books and Alma Classics, will be publishing BUDDHALAND BROOKLYN in late February or early March in 2013.
BUDDHALAND BROOKLYN, to be published in the US July 17 by Scribner, is about a repressed Buddhist priest sent to New York to open a temple.
Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini have created an author’s publisher in Alma Books, their passion for literature defying the cynicism of the modern book industry. They did a wonderful job publishing The Hundred-Foot Journey in the UK, and I can honestly say that their tag line – “A publisher with a soul” – pretty neatly sums up Alma Books.
If you doubt my word just read their recently published Brilliance by Anthony McCarten, a riveting tale about an impoverished Thomas Edison getting sucked into the bear-like embrace of the famous American banker, J. P. Morgan.
McCarten sure can write. The first line of the novel – “The inventor poured himself a glass of milk and listened for the twentieth century” – had me hooked. Alma Books quietly and consistently produces such intelligent, well-written books for discerning readers who love literature. So I am thrilled my scribbles are included in Alma’s exquisite portfolio of contemporary novels.
Happy New Year folks. May we all enjoy a quality vintage in 2012. I think we’re all overdue for a good year.
As to my 2012 calendar, besides a move to New York, I have the joy of overseeing the birth of my second novel. On July 17, 2012, Scribner publishes BUDDHALAND BROOKLYN.
Here’s a taste of what to expect:
Featuring rich descriptions and a cast of eccentric characters, this is a contemporary fable about a Japanese Buddhist priest who ends up finding himself in the unlikeliest of places. Growing up in a quaint mountainside village in Japan, Seido Oda’s boyhood is spent fishing in clear mountainside streams and helping his parents run their small inn. At the age of eleven, Oda is sent to study with the monks at a nearby Buddhist temple. This peaceful, quiet refuge in the remote mountains of Japan is the only home the introverted monk has ever known until he approaches his fortieth birthday and is ordered by his superior to cross the ocean and open a temple in Brooklyn.
Ripped from the isolated, serene life of his homeland temple, Oda encounters a shock to the system in New York—a motley crew of American Buddhists whose misguided practices lead to a host of hilarious cultural misunderstandings. It is only when Oda comes to appreciate the Americans, flaws and all, that he sees his own shortcomings and finally finds that sense of belonging he has always sought.
A lively and vivid novel, this entertaining and edifying meditation on the meaning of true acceptance stirs from the very first page.
I’m as excited as if the Beaujolais Nouveau just arrived at the stores, and it’s not just because the stock market recovered a hefty chunk of losses today. The real reason? The U.S. paperback of The Hundred-Foot Journey was officially released today.
In celebration, I am reposting The New York Times‘ “editor’s choice” review that ran last year. To read the piece in its entirety, click here.
And I am also posting a link to the interview I gave NPR’s wonderful, The Diane Rehm Show. Click here and hit the “listen” toggle after the page has loaded.
In Britain, The Hundred-Foot Journey can be had at a terrific bargain price, along with an exclusive essay, through the Mail On Sunday‘s book store, where the book is the UK newspaper’s, Book Of The Month for August. For full details, click here.
And, finally, I warmly welcome any and all to join my facebook page where I routinely post updates and answer questions about The Hundred-Foot Journey and my next novel, Buddhaland, Brooklyn. Please do so by clicking here.
Buddhaland Brooklyn
I am pleased to announce that Scribner, publisher of The Hundred-Foot Journey, will be publishing my second novel, Buddhaland Brooklyn, in July 2012. It’s about a Japanese Buddhist priest recounting the life journey that made him discover his true home in America. To learn more go here.
This summer, on August 8th, Scribner is publishing the paperback version of The Hundred-Foot Journey, which will be featured in the American Booksellers Association’s prestigious IndieNext list for August as one of the summer’s best paperback releases. The paperback has already been featured in O as one of Oprah magazine’s top nine books to take to the beach.
The Arts Of Intimacy
I just read The Arts Of Intimacy, a fascinating book written by Sarah Lawrence College’s Dean, Jerrilynn D. Dodds, with co-authors Maria Rosa Menocal and Abigail Krasner Balbale. Not surprising the book was named as a Book Of The Year, by The Times Literary Supplement, and won the 2010 Albert C. Outler Book Prize. It’s crammed with startling information about how Spain’s Christians, Jews and Muslims lived side-by-side, their weaving cultures at times melding, opposing, and reinforcing each other in a fascinating period that runs roughly from the 10th century to the end of the 15th century (when Ferdinand and Isabella stamped out Spain’s religious pluralism during the Inquisition.)
On every page I learned something new: how Gibraltar is named after the Berber conqueror, Jabal Tariq; how the dhimma, the relatively tolerant method with which the Muslim rulers had governed the Jews and Christians during 700 years of Islamic Spanish rule, was initially adopted and adapted by the new Castilian Christian rulers; how the Mozarabs (Christians who spoke Arabic) distrusted the Catholic Alfonso VI when he retook Toledo in 1085 (they rightly feared their autonomy would be curbed) and were frequently inclined to support the parting Islamic rulers to the south.
But most of all I love this, just one example of how the living “arts” meld and mix opposing cultures: one popular and distinct form of Andalusian poetry was called “ring song,” or muwashshah in Arabic, and began with a very formal and classic verse in Arabic (or in Hebrew) before circling around to its final lines, which were usually impertinent and in a vernacular language. (That local language was usually a form of Romance, or Mozarabic, which was a local take on the Latin spread through Europe by the conquering Roman Empire almost a thousand years earlier, and a near-extinct language still spoken today by a minority of Swiss living in the Alps.) The first formal and classical stanzas of the muwashshaw were often “sung” by men waxing lyrical about a beautiful woman, and the woman finally answering, in the local tongue, with a slap-up-the-head rejoinder.
Fantastic stuff. Forgive the writer’s narcissism, but I was so taken by The Arts of Intimacy because Dodds and her co-authors are examining (albeit from a different angle) the colliding and accommodating and adapting that miraculously takes place when people of different cultures meet, that I, too, find myself exploring in my novels, The Hundred-Foot Journey and Buddhaland Brooklyn.
Sarah Lawrence College
Bless Sarah Lawrence College. A double bless for its erudite and efficient librarian, Charling (Sha) Fagan.
I mentioned to Sha I was stumped about finding a Rilke poem in its German original, which in English is known as Sometimes A Man Stands Up During Supper. It had caught my imagination as a Robert Bly translation, and seemed to so well sum up my next novel, Buddhaland Brooklyn.
Literally 30 seconds later the Sarah Lawrence College librarian had the original poem at my finger tips. So here is the original, care of the fantastic Sha Fagan.
It is, despite Bly’s sensitive translation, better in German – the children of the second man are “ziehn,” which really means “drawn” or “pulled”, almost against their will. That’s better, although no question Bly caught the poem’s essence and meaning very well in English.
Manchmal steht einer auf beim Abendbrot
Manchmal steht einer auf beim Abendbrot
und geht hinaus und geht und geht und geht, -
weil eine Kirche wo im Osten steht.
Und seine Kinder segnen ihn wie tot.
Und einer, welcher stirbt in seinem Haus,
bleibt drinnen wohnen, bleibt in Tisch und Glas,
so dass die Kinder in die Welt hinaus
zu jener Kirche ziehn, die er vergaß. -Rainer Maria Rilke
