Europe's news in English

COPY LINK

SEX

Fifty shades of fake: spin-offs irk French publisher

Copy us at your own risk. That is the message sent by the French publisher of "Fifty Shades of Grey" which is cracking the whip at spin-offs of the erotic romance.

Published: 21 November 2012 15:56 CET

Publisher Lattes has trademarked the title of the book, which has sold a quarter of a million copies in France since it hit shelves a month ago, and told AFP it has sent warning letters to two publishers it accuses of infringement.

One of them, Les Editions First, has released "Decoding Fifty Shades of Grey" by Ana de Lis and is planning a "Fifty Shades of Grey Cookbook" for January.

The second, Contre-dires, published a French translation of "50 Ways to Play: BDSM for Nice People" – billed as a practical guide to bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism by Debra and Don Macleod.

Lattes warned it may take further action depending on the response it gets from the publishers' lawyers.

Other spin-offs released in France include a translation of "Fifty Shades of Pleasure: A Bedside Companion" by Marisa Bennett, published by Larousse, with at least three more titles planned in France for 2013.

"Some of these titles, which pick up on elements of the book, are clearly parasitical," said Laurent Laffont, editorial director at Lattes, which trademarked the title at the request of the agent of British author E.L. James.

"We would like those planning new releases next year to know that we are watching very closely to ensure they are not parasitical. We will be very vigilant," he warned.

Spiced up with sado-masochism, the 2011 novel is the first part of a trilogy about a relationship between a college graduate and a young business magnate. It has sold some 40 million copies worldwide.

For fans of the book, a range of naughty bedroom accessories went on sale this month in France, billed as the official E.L. James-approved "Fifty Shades" sex toy collection.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.

Become a Member to leave a comment.

'Lost' manuscript of pro-Nazi French author published 78 years later

It is a rare thing when the story of a book’s publication is even more mysterious than the plot of the novel itself.

But that might be said of Guerre (War) by one of France’s most celebrated and controversial literary figures, Louis-Ferdinand Celine, which arrives in bookstores on Thursday, some 78 years after its manuscript disappeared.

Celine’s reputation has somehow survived the fact that he was one of France’s most eager collaborators with the Nazis.

Already a superstar thanks to his debut novel Journey to the End of the Night (1932), Celine became one of the most ardent anti-Semitic propagandists even before France’s occupation.

In June 1944, with the Allies advancing on Paris, the writer abandoned a pile of his manuscripts in his Montmartre apartment.

Celine feared rough treatment from authorities in liberated France, having spent the war carousing with the Gestapo, and giving up Jews and foreigners to the Nazi regime and publishing racist pamphlets about Jewish world conspiracies.

For decades, no one knew what happened to his papers, and he accused resistance fighters of burning them. But at some point in the 2000s, they ended up with retired journalist Jean-Pierre Thibaudat, who passed them – completely out of the blue – to Celine’s heirs last summer.

‘A miracle’
Despite the author’s history, reviews of the 150-page novel, published by Gallimard, have been unanimous in their praise.

“The end of a mystery, the discovery of a great text,” writes Le Point; a “miracle,” says Le Monde; “breathtaking,” gushes Journal du Dimanche.

Gallimard has yet to say whether the novel will be translated.

Like much of Celine’s work, Guerre is deeply autobiographical, recounting his experiences during World War I.

It opens with 20-year-old Brigadier Ferdinand finding himself miraculously alive after waking up on a Belgian battlefield, follows his treatment and hasty departure for England – all based on Celine’s real experiences.

His time across the Channel is the subject of another newly discovered novel, Londres (London), to be published this autumn.

If French reviewers seem reluctant to focus on Celine’s rampant World War II anti-Semitism, it is partly because his early writings (Guerre is thought to date from 1934) show little sign of it.

Journey to the End of the Night was a hit among progressives for its anti-war message, as well as a raw, slang-filled style that stuck two fingers up at bourgeois sensibilities.

Celine’s attitude to the Jews only revealed itself in 1937 with the publication of a pamphlet, Trifles for a Massacre, which set him on a new path of racial hatred and conspiracy-mongering.

He never back-tracked. After the war, he launched a campaign of Holocaust-denial and sought to muddy the waters around his own war-time exploits – allowing him to worm his way back into France without repercussions.

‘Divine surprise’
Many in the French literary scene seem keen to separate early and late Celine.

“These manuscripts come at the right time – they are a divine surprise – for Celine to become a writer again: the one who matters, from 1932 to 1936,” literary historian Philippe Roussin told AFP.

Other critics say the early Celine was just hiding his true feelings.

They highlight a quote that may explain the gap between his progressive novels and reactionary feelings: “Knowing what the reader wants, following fashions like a shopgirl, is the job of any writer who is very financially constrained,” Celine wrote to a friend.

Despite his descent into Nazism, he was one of the great chroniclers of the trauma of World War I and the malaise of the inter-war years.

An exhibition about the discovery of the manuscripts opens on Thursday at the Gallimard Gallery and includes the original, hand-written sheets of Guerre.

They end with a line that is typical of Celine: “I caught the war in my head. It is locked in my head.”

In the final years before his death in 1961, Celine endlessly bemoaned the loss of his manuscripts.

The exhibition has a quote from him on the wall: “They burned them, almost three manuscripts, the pest-purging vigilantes!”

This was one occasion – not the only one – where he was proved wrong.

Url copied to clipboard!