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April is the Coolest Month

4/23/2015

Those of you who fled to Montreal to avoid the excessive hype surrounding the release of my second book are probably outraged by the O. Henry twist of discovering the French edition of my FIRST book crowding out Jules Verne in all the Canadian bookstores. Well, serves you right.

The French edition is a beauty – technically a livre, and not a book: livres are taller with a slight bevel to the page corners – and wonderfully translated by Nathalie Bru, who, the title page wants you to know, was working from a manuscript in United States English, rather than, say, British English, which, I’ll be the first to admit, probably made the entire enterprise much more of a challenge. (Whether or not she translated the book into Canadian French, those of you in self-imposed exile will have to tell me.)

Nathalie Bru, translator extraordinaire.

The cover design is by Jean-Francois Martin. It says on his website that doing the cover helped him prepare for the World Typo Championship, which this year will be held in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-
llantysiliogogogoch, Whales. (This is my own somewhat free translation of
"Jean-François Martin se prépare pour le championnat du monde de typo avec une nouvelle couverture pour un roman des éditions Les Grands Personnes écrit par Henry Clark et intitulé Ce qu'on a trouvé dans le canapé puis comment on a sauvé le monde." It's possible Llanfairpwllgwyngyll-gogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch wasn't really mentioned.) (And I know it's Wails and not Whales; I was just attempting a little "typo" humor.)

Here's the back cover. I'm pretty sure the bit about me translates as "Henry Clark spends an awful lot of time on his sofa." (It's as if the French can see into my living room!)

And here's a map of the Paris Metro, with the names of the stations replaced with the titles of this spring's more interesting Young Adult books. (Clicking it will make it full size, but be prepared to jump back.) My book's the third stop on the red "Inclassable" line, making it an easy walk to the Louvre and the Apple store. (I'm hoping Inclassable means "unclassifiable," rather than "not classy.")

The book was actually printed in Spain, so, in future, I intend telling people I had both a French edition and a Spanish edition. This is one of the few benefits of outsourcing.

And - - I've just been informed the French edition has sold over trois copies! If I recall correctly from high school, trois is French for million! Incroyable!

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Sofa is One

7/2/2014

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July 2nd is the one year anniversary of the publication of What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World, and what better way to celebrate than to unveil the cover of the French edition? Here it is:

Ce Qu’on a Trouvé dans le Canapé puis Comment on a Sauvé le Monde is ten letters longer than the English title, making the entire book heftier and therefore a much better value than its American counterpart. Google Translate says the French title means What We Found in the Hors d’oeuvre and How It Saved the Newspaper, so, obviously, Google Translate had the same high school French teacher I did.

At the bottom of the cover it says “Un Roman de Henry Clark.” This is the first Roman I’ve ever written, if you don’t count Sophia Loren when I was thirteen. (Sophia never wrote back, although I did get a rather terse note from Carlo Ponti.)

Availability: Au printemps, by which I mean spring of 2015 and not the fancy Parisian department store where books like mine are kept in a bin in the alley outside the back door. You might, more profitably, try Les Cousins d’Alice over on Rue Daguerre, next to the baguette place. (My book will be in the Very Distant Cousins section.)

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The French Connection

12/7/2012

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Little, Brown just sold the French rights to What We Found in the Sofa to Editions Des Grandes Personnes (or, as I would have translated it in my third year of high school French, Big Huge Person Books, which should tell you how well I did in high school French and further tells you why I will not be trusted to translate my own book. The name of the company is somewhat better rendered into English as Grown-Up Books, but that doesn’t make much sense, since WWFITS is aimed at a Middle School audience and not adults, unless there’s some sort of nationwide conspiracy in France to convince young people they’re actually older than they are so they can be gotten into the workforce earlier to boost the economy. When I was last in Paris, there did seem to be a lot of twelve-year-olds driving taxis.)

In my younger days I was corrupted by a series of French graphic novels depicting the exploits of Asterix the Gaul; it seems only fair that I now get to send the French something Asterix, and more specifically his friend Obelix, had an influence on.

The French audiobook will be performed by mimes.

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April is the Coolest Month

Sofa is One

The French Connection

Henry Clark

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