Book agents seldom get the glory. Authors earn the accolades, and publishers reap the biggest financial rewards (or at least, they used to), while agents remain mostly anonymous emissaries, known only within the publishing world. Hustling behind the scenes, they connect the scribblers with the dealmakers, playing a vital intermediary role, so that the reading public gets its regular allotment of food for thought.
Only occasionally does a literary agent pop up on the public radar. Maybe someone has a hand in discovering a great talent, as when Bonnie Nadell pulled 24-year-old David Foster Wallace's first novel, The Broom of the System, from the slush pile. Or perhaps a book deal makes headlines as sheer business braggadocio: Washington, DC-based agent Robert Barnett holds this record with the US$15 million advance he netted for Bill Clinton's memoir, My Life, in 2002.
Marysia Juszczakiewicz - founder and owner of the boutique Hong Kong outfit Peony Literary Agency - has yet to sell an international blockbuster, but there's a fair chance she soon will. Juszczakiewicz (pronounced Yush-cha-kevitch) is already responsible for delivering an impressive array of China's best contemporary authors to the English-reading world.
Although Peony has been in business for just a little over three years, the stable of writers whom Juszczakiewicz has ushered into English publication includes Man Asian Literature Prize-winner Su Tong; Yan Geling, whose book Flowers of War has just received a boost from the Christian Bale-starring film adaptation; Chan Koonchung, author of the controversial The Fat Years, a dystopian send-up of contemporary Chinese politics and materialism, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages; and racecar-driving author, super-blogger and all-around Chinese youth culture phenomenon Han Han, among about 15 others.
Sitting down to coffee, Juszczakiewicz exudes the polite intensity and singularity of purpose of successful entrepreneurs everywhere - and her BlackBerry, of course, is always close at hand. Yet she's also generous with her laugh and quick to smirk in a way that conveys she has as much appreciation as facility for charm and clever mischief.
'There are so many interesting stories coming out of this part of the world, in a variety of different ways,' she says of the Chinese book market. 'And people are interested in what's happening here like never before. What I do is look at stories and try to present different voices from the region, in a way that people who aren't here can empathise with and appreciate.'