Долголетний редактор Shelf Awareness Джон Маттер стал автором исторического романа о шпионаже в нацистской Германии

John Mutter is already well known to booksellers as the longtime editor-in-chief of Shelf Awareness, which he cofounded in 2005. Prior to that, he served as PW’s bookselling editor for 24 years. But next month, he'll find himself on the other side of the bookselling equation—as a debut author. Mutter's Fortune and Glass (Left Field, Oct.) is a World War II novel set in Nazi Germany, pitched by its publisher as The Book Thief meets John Le Carré. It tells the story of Rudi, a mid-level official in the German Foreign Ministry, who passes intelligence to the Allies, while trying to protect the Jewish woman he has loved for years from harm. PW talked with Mutter about his choice of publisher, drawing inspiration from history, and what he learned in the process of releasing his first book. You've worked in the publishing industry for decades. You know all the publishers and major players. Why did you decide to go with Left Field, which launched this past year? I had obviously known Len Vlahos, Left Field’s cofounder, for about 30, 35 years: I got to know him when he started at the American Booksellers Association. Kristen Gilligan, his spouse and business partner, joined the ABA a bit later. I kept up with them when they bought the Tattered Cover bookstore and then afterwards—I've always just enjoyed them. I used to have an agent, and he shopped it around in the spring of 2020, when a few things were happening, like the pandemic and then the George Floyd murder. My book didn’t go anywhere, so I forgot about it—and then I went to Winter Institute in Denver. I knew Len and Kristen lived in Denver, so I invited them out to lunch; partway through they said that they were starting this new publishing house. They were going to focus on books by published authors and by new people, and books that have been rejected elsewhere. By the end of the lunch, I got up my courage to say that I thought I might qualify on several points, and they told me to send them a PDF. They were interested and I felt comfortable going with them. You write in your author's note that this novel is inspired by the real-life story of Fritz Kolbe, a career employee of the German Foreign Ministry during World War II. How much does the plot of Fortune and Glass deviate from his actual life story? I changed some details, like where Kolbe was when the Nazis took over. During the period leading up to World War II, he was stationed in several different places, including Spain and South Africa. I didn't want to get into all that, so I just had Rudi, my main character, spending time in Turkey. I think Kolbe actually was in Turkey for a very short time, and it was just easier to do it that way. Most of the characters are fictional, but the story is similar otherwise to Kolbe’s life. Kolbe was in the foreign ministry before the Nazis took over. He stayed on, though he was always anti-Nazi and refused to join the Nazi Party, even though everybody else was doing it, especially in the foreign ministry. After the war, Kolbe was very interested in being part of the reconstituted foreign ministry when West Germany was founded, but they blackballed him because they thought he was a traitor; he helped the Allies. I'm interested in the title, which refers to a phrase that the grandfather of Sara, Rudi’s Jewish love interest, would say, about fortune and glass not lasting long. Why did you decide that this would be the title? It was a common phrase in Germany at the time and I've always liked it, this idea that all great fortune can be so transitory. It’s like Germany before Hitler: the Kaiser was an idiot, but Germany were making all these strides. The population was among the best educated in the world; they made those scientific and economic advances, and it was relatively socially liberal. Jews were recognized as full citizens under the Kaiser. It was one of the most progressive societies in the world, and it was all destroyed so quickly by the Nazis. Not all Germans voted for Hitler, and he never won a majority in any election, but he took over, and that was the end. Sound familiar? How and where did you do your research? I read up on Kolbe and about his handler, Allen Dulles. Rudi’s handler, Mr. Clark, was modeled on Dulles. I traveled a lot. I went to all the places that I mention in Fortune and Glass. I went to the island of Rügen, where Rudi’s wife hailed from and lived during the war, and visited Dulles’s house in Switzerland. I even visited Kolbe’s grave in Berlin, just to say hello. What’s your big takeaway, having finally gone through the publishing process yourself after so many years writing about others who’ve done it? Having been in the book world for 45 years, I thought I knew almost everything about what it would be like to be published, and I did know a lot. But it turns out I knew a lot about certain aspects of getting published; there are other things that I just didn't get before I went through it myself. There was a lot of editing involved in the last year. I did so much editing, more than I thought I would wind up doing—that was kind of an eye opener.