I have just received an advance proof of Heart-Shaped Box, a heavily-hyped horror debut which went for gazillions in both the US and the UK. Anyone who has been following the story of the author's secret identity will be pleased to read the dedication "For my Dad, one of the good ones". Doesn't quite give the game away, but heart-warming nonetheless to find that horror writers can also display sentiment.
But the father and son writing strand continues: much has been written about the runaway (and locally quite controversial) success of Jonathan Littell's Les Bienveillantes in France, where this 900-page doorstop of a novel about a Nazi torturer's fictional memoirs has already sold over 200,000 copies, won the Académie Francaise literary award and been shortlisted for all the major autumn book prizes, including the Goncourt. It was the book of the Frankfurt book fair, with the English language rights going at auction to Chatto & Windus in the UK and, reportedly, HarperCollins in the USA for the proverbial high six-figure sums. The Paris literary intelligentsia is divided over Littell's book, with many blaming its success on its Anglo Saxon-type marketing, the fact it was sold to Gallimard by a literary agent, and the fact that Littell is an American who writes in French.
Jonathan, who was brought up in France, is of course the son of the splendid American spy thriller writer Robert Littell. Best known for The Company (soon to be seen as a major mini-series on television), he is the author of a handful of novels which, in my opinion, stand proudly against the best of John Le Carré. Littell, a former Newsweek journalist, has been based in France for years, and made a rare visit to the UK two years ago to attend the Crime Scene Festival which I run at the National Film Theatre; his views on today's geopolitical world and debate with Henry Porter made for fascinating if uncomfortable listening. But what I remember best about his time here was his wristwatch, a political statement in its own right, which displayed a continuous countdown to the day George W Bush's second term in office ends ...
When Jonathan Littell's novel first appeared in France it was listed in his publisher's catalogue as his "first literary novel", rather than a debut novel, a curious turn of phrase which caught my attention. Research soon established that in 1989, at the age of 22, he wrote a novel in English, which I have now discovered on my groaning shelves. Surprisingly, it's a cyberpunk science fiction saga called Bad Voltage. A breathless tale of high-tech lowlifes, bio-enhanced delinquents and doped-out street kids learning to survive in riot-torn future Paris it's heavily indebted to William Gibson, with a cover blurb that shouts "They're wired for speed, living high and crashing hard in tomorrow's world beneath the streets". Actually, a damn good read, with an admirable list of the music it was written to and hand-drawn maps of the future Paris underground world.
Ah, that French connection again! I was actually brought up in Paris myself, but I doubt if my own offspring are about to write books, after succumbing to the financial lure of branding and technology. So, the Jakubowski literary movement will likely end with me. Shame.
