Jew World Order

People in America are certainly fascinated. Knox chose as her representative
Robert B. Barnett, a lawyer better known for negotiating book deals for
presidents Obama, Bush and Clinton – and Sir Elton John. Publishing
executives found her charming, thoughtful and well-read. “Everybody fell in
love with her,” said one.

At home Knox is widely viewed as an innocent abroad, the attractive,
all-American victim of an antediluvian Italian justice system. Her
supporters see nothing wrong with her telling her side of the story while
recouping her family’s legal costs, thought to be in the region of
$1 million. HarperCollins, meanwhile, will hope to recoup some of its huge
advance in television deals and newspaper serialisations.

A positive balance sheet is far from guaranteed, however. “I think it’s very
risky money,” says Ed Victor, the London-based literary agent whose clients
range from Keith Richards to Alastair Campbell and Frederick Forsyth. “But
all advances at that level are risky. A lot will depend on whom they hire as
the collaborator. It has to be written well.”

HarperCollins hasn’t released the name of the ghostwriter, but one imagines
they will have their work cut out. Not only is the book scheduled for
publication early next year, they will also have to tread the fine line of
polishing Knox’s prose without losing her voice. Although Knox is said to
have harboured long-standing dreams of becoming a writer, extracts from her
prison diaries – some of which were given to investigators in an attempt to
clear her name and were later leaked to newspapers – suggest that she has a
little way to go. One poem read: “Do you know me? Open your eyes and see
that when it is said I am an angel, or I am a devil, or I am a lost girl,
recognise that what is really lost is: the truth!”

In the British market, Knox’s book will face far greater challenges than the
quality of her ghosted prose. “I don’t think the book will be huge here
because a lot of British sympathies are with the British victim,” says
Victor.

Jon Howells, a spokesman for Waterstone’s, also strikes a cautionary note.
“This is a book that the country will feel very sensitively about,” he says.
“It is one of the most tragic, emotive and widely talked about cases of
recent years. But it’s impossible to predict whether that interest will
transmit into book sales.”

The interest in the O J Simpson case, for example, did not lead to good sales
for his book, If I Did It. And while many pundits are comparing Knox’s book
to Jaycee Dugard’s A Stolen Life, the memoir of the Californian girl held
against her will for 18 years which has sold more than a million copies
since last July, Victor thinks the comparison unhelpful. “She was the victim
of a crime, not the putative perpetrator of a crime,” he says. “And that’s a
big difference. You could say she was the victim of a miscarriage of justice
– but so are a lot of people.”

Of course, the main reason people will read Knox’s book will be to try to work
out for themselves – yet again – which one they think she is: perpetrator or
victim. There have been acres of newsprint, a dozen books and a
spectacularly ill-judged film for American television – but this is the
first time that we will hear from Knox herself. The book, said a spokesman
for HarperCollins, will be “very thoughtful, reflective and serious”, moving
it away “from the world of tabloids”.

Interestingly, even those sceptical of the book’s success defend the decision
to publish it. “Our job is not to censor,” says Howells. “It is to put in
front of people the books which we think they want to read.”

Victor, for his part, says that he would have represented Knox, if he’d been
approached. “People are entitled to a defence,” he says. “And they’re
entitled to a literary agent.”

It’s an entitlement that almost everyone involved appears to have taken up in
the last few months. Even Peter Kercher, Meredith’s father, a freelance
journalist who has repeatedly spoken with dignity of the pain caused by
Knox’s celebrity status – and his dread of Knox selling her story – has
signed a deal with Hodder to publish a book next April about his daughter.

Meanwhile, Raffaele Sollecito, Knox’s former boyfriend and co-defendant, has
recently engaged Andrew Gumbel, a respected British journalist based in
America, to ghost his side of the story.

“The book will be a lot of things: a love story, a harrowing description of an
innocent young man in prison, a full-blooded Italian family drama, and a
legal thriller,” says Gumbel. “But these are not the only reasons I got
involved: what happened to Raffaele and Amanda was inexcusable and
unconscionable, and my intention is to get to the bottom of exactly why they
were targeted.”

Gumbel denies he’s cashing in on a brutal murder. “I know that, in Raffaele’s
case, no day has gone by without him thinking of Meredith and the hell her
family has gone through,” he says. “We are not ‘cashing in’ on her death,
but rather illuminating the way the Italian police and judiciary compounded
the tragedy by throwing two young people into prison for no good reason.
Their stories – both their stories – deserve to be heard and I believe it is
important that they are.”

And so after the trials by the courts in Perugia – and the trial by media –
comes the trial by autobiography.