Tag Archives: Actes Sud

International Bestseller Lists, July 2013

Every month, Publishing Trends runs Fiction international bestseller lists from four territories–France, Germany, Italy, and Spain–with one rotating slot devoted to a list from the country featured in that month’s International Article. In connection with this month’s International feature, July’s featured list is from Hong Kong and lists overall Chinese-language bestsellers, all nonfiction. Those books that have been published in English…Continue Reading

Bringing Bandes Dessinées to the U.S.A.

“I don’t know why, but there are often naked persons in French comics,” said Sylvain Coissard of the Sylvain Coissard Agency. He was one of the panelists at the French Publishers’ Agency’s “From Bande Dessinée to Graphic Novel: Drawing Two Traditions Together,” which took place in November at NYU’s Maison Française. Coissard was speaking about…Continue Reading

International Bestsellers: Murders & Miracles

Tannöd, Germany’s current number one fiction title, overcame two obstacles to win the prestigious 2007 Krimipreis for the best crime novel: the protagonist is not an investigator or super sleuth as is typical in crime fiction, and it is Andrea Maria Schenkel’s debut. She based the genre-bending novel on actual unsolved murders that took place…Continue Reading

International Bestsellers: Joe Speedboat & Friends

Sylvia Plath, Puberty, & A Slowly Setting Midnight Sun Combining the quirky prose of Paul Auster and the eccentricity of The World According to Garp, Dutch author Tommy Wieringa’s latest novel, Joe Speedboat (De Bezige Bij), injects the classic Bildungsroman with postmodern absurdity. The eponymous protagonist, a fourteen year-old bomb expert, airplane builder, and kinetic…Continue Reading

International Bestsellers: So, Do You Su Doku?

Logic Game Spurs Addiction, Israel Builds a Bridge to Turkey, Takako Takes a Walk Crosswords are so 2004. The new fill-in-the blank fad? Here’s a hint: it’s six letters long (and five times as fun, according to some). Su Doku, the puzzle craze sweeping the world, from Japan to the Czech Republic, has created a…Continue Reading

International Fiction Bestsellers

Cafés-philo all over France are abuzz with the newly hip notion of “anti-anti-Americanism,” and the headiest homage to contrarian Frenchness comes from Yves Berger, the legendary literary director of Editions Grasset — and a member of the august Conseil Supérieur de la langue française — who has hit the charts with his Dictionary for Lovers…Continue Reading

The Real Thing

Russian Expose on Female Bombers, Germany’s 99-Euro Bestseller, and A Real Gouda Story from Holland There certainly was no shortage of politically charged books at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year, and one of the most startling of all was penned by a 23-year-old Russian journalist Yulia Yuzik, who surveys the growing number of female…Continue Reading

International Fiction Bestsellers

It’s a Wonderful Double Life Hot-Buttered in Finland, Dreyfus Redux in Israel, and Watusi on the Brain in Spain Nouveau-riche restaurateur Brede Ziegler is murdered not once, but twice in No Echo, the sixth in a series of shrewdly executed detective novels from megastar Norwegian author Anne Holt. After Ziegler turns up hot-buttered and trussed,…Continue Reading

International Fiction Bestsellers

Blowin’ in the Wind Grandes Gusts in Spain, Bewitchery in Greece, And Crazy Birds Flutter Aloft in Israel Breezes, gales, gusts, and tempests swirl like suspicious characters through this month’s bestselling Spanish novel Difficult Airs, the latest effort from well-known erotica queen Almudena Grandes. The author’s fifth novel sets out to map the meaning of…Continue Reading

Books Without Borders?

Thirteen years after the Berlin Wall bit the dust, global publishing giants have staked out beachheads across the Balkans, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, and Hungary, with a gimlet eye turned to each country’s potential print-runs, GDP data, and reading habits. On the up side, these strategic investments in Eastern Europe have pumped up flagging local…Continue Reading