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A new film about the life of reclusive author J D Salinger has revealed the titles and content of five books which it claims are planned for publication.
The film, "Salinger", produced alongside a new biography of the writer, was screened for the first time at the Telluride film festival in Colorado earlier this week.
The titles cited included The Last and Best of the Peter Pans, a short story said to revisit The Catcher in the Rye protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Other books mentioned were novel A Counterintelligence Agent's Diary, about Salinger's time with the US army interrogating prisoners of war; A World War II Love Story, based on his brief post-war marriage to wife Sylvia; A Religious Manual, detailing his spiritual beliefs; and The Family Glass, featuring five new short stories about his recurring character Seymour Glass and his family.
The film also claims that much of Salinger's life was impacted by post-traumatic stress disorder following the war.
The new documentary was created by Shane Salerno, who has spent nine years researching and filming it, while the accompanying book, Salinger, is co-written with David Shields, and was published globally by Simon & Schuster yesterday (3rd September).
It claims that Salinger left instructions to publish the books in a sequence, following his death at the age of 91 in 2010. However, the author's widow and son, Colleen O'Neill and Matthew Salinger, who control the estate, have declined to comment.
Salerno told the New York Times that the books would not necessarily be published with Little, Brown, the company that published The Catcher in the Rye. The publisher also declined to comment, as have Salinger's agent Phyllis Westberg, and UK publisher, Penguin.