The Agency’s 9th anniversary & rights report: Oneiron sold to Spain

This week Elina Ahlback Literary Agency celebrates its 9^thbirthday: a big thank-you for all of our clients and colleagues for the past years’ collaborations – it is an honor to head towards our first full decade with you!

At the recently organized New York Rights Fair, Elina Ahlbäck shared her insights on the agenting business and exporting Scandinavian story-telling in a panel discussion on Nordic fiction, called “The Scandinavian Smell of Success: Why, and How, Their Crime Fiction Has Become a Global Export.”

The panelists discussed the importance of film adaptations in the book business. “Film helps keep Scandinavian literature at the top of mind,” Ahlbäck said. “We have five titles that are already optioned. That global business is very important.”

Read a full article on the panel on Publisher’s Weekly here!

The panel concentrated on crime fiction, which has opened the way to other genres as well in picky markets like the one of the United States. Literary fiction has been gaining popularity; one of our hot titles has been the Finlandia-winning Oneiron by Laura Lindstedt, for which we’re glad to announce the 14^th foreign rights deal: Armaenia Editorial has acquired the world Spanish rights for the novel.

“Wildly imaginative, intense and highly entertaining, Oneiron is the fable that we most need these days of exulting feminism. A tale that introduces and celebrates diversity of women of all conditions, pasts and mentalities and pushes them into self and other-conscience, while the reader sits and watches ever more captivated,” said editor Ricardo López of Armaenia Editorial.

The French and English editions of Oneiron have also gathered positive feedback from reviewers and readers:

“The unsettling story of the book, which deals with the pain of leaving life, lingers between Elfriede Jelinek’s chilling analysis and Lars von Trier’s minimalism known from Dogville.” – Livres Hebdo, France

“In the sheer diversity of her characters, Lindstedt might be responding to other modern realities: genetic interconnections revealed by DNA tests; global migration and interdependence; the random array of newspaper obituaries that follow a terrorist attack; and the boundary-breaking and community-building properties of social media, two years before the rise of the #MeToo movement.”  – Public Books, USA

Click here for reading materials for Oneiron!