There are five literary adaptations in the Oscar race for best picture this year, including movies based on Emma Donoghue’s “Room” and Colm Tóibín’s “Brooklyn.” But among the hopeful novelists who will be closely watching Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, only one has negotiated a $1.3 trillion global trade deal.

That would be Michael Punke, the deputy United States Trade Representative and the United States ambassador to the World Trade Organization. In addition to being an international trade policy wonk, Mr. Punke is the author of “The Revenant,” a 2002 novel about a 19th-century American fur trapper’s epic struggle for survival in the wilderness, and the inspiration for Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s film. The movie is up for 12 Oscars, including best picture, and has catapulted the novel onto the best-seller lists.

Of all the unlikely success stories at the Academy Awards this year, from Sylvester Stallone’s surprise comeback in “Creed” to the debut science-fiction author Andy Weir’s blockbuster hit with “The Martian,” perhaps none is as surprising as Mr. Punke’s sudden and overdue literary fame. “The Revenant” sold around 15,000 copies after it was first published nearly 14 years ago, and it had been out of print for several years by the time the movie began shooting.

When word got out that a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio was in the works, Picador, an imprint of Macmillan, acquired reprint rights, and the novel got a second life. A new hardcover came out in 2015. Since then, “The Revenant” has sold more than half a million copies, and Picador has reprinted the book 21 times.