Let us welcome, as every year, the arrival in our list of fictions by 13 at the table!, this fantastic initiative launched ten years ago by Pocket for the benefit of Restos du coeur. The principle: a collection of thirteen short stories written by as many novelists, all volunteers, on a theme (this year, “I’m ten years old!”), the profits from which help to fund the coffers of the association created by Coluche in 1985 – or 7.4 million additional meals to date. Innovation 2023: the price of the collection which, “taking into account the economic and social context”, increases from 5 to 6 euros.
The least of it. And nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of readers who acquired the work as soon as it was released on November 2. For the rest, note the emergence of Maxime Chattam, a subscriber to bestsellers, including the 28th novel, Lux (Albin Michel), a metaphysical investigation into the near future, intends to play with our fears, particularly climate ones. And let us point out the presence, not far from the Top 20, of Dominique Barbéris whose novel, A way of loving (Gallimard), was crowned on October 26 with the grand novel prize of the French Academy and which is now approaching the 10,000 copies mark (according to Edistat). While waiting to see the repercussions of the other prices on our list of best sellers – notwithstanding the Femina (Neige Sinno) and the Goncourt (Jean-Baptiste Andrea) at the top of the list for weeks.
No prizes for Franz-Olivier Giesbert, but a very nice start for the 3rd volume of his Intimate history of the Fifth Republic, French tragedy (Gallimard), the story of the decades of Mitterrand, Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande. A work of more than 500 pages thus presented by the famous journalist writer: “Drawing from my notebooks and the Journal that I kept for years, I wanted to tell how I had experienced this time of false hopes and real ruptures, in a back and forth between our perceptions of the time and our view of today. With the conviction that there is never fatality in history.”
The first parts of his Intimate story have sold 69,000 copies (volume I, 2021) and 65,000 copies (volume II, 2022), what will happen to this one? In the same register of contemporary history, we will mention the imminent arrival of volume I of the biography of De Gaulle. A life, titled Nobody’s man. 1890-1944 (Grasset), by the publisher Jean-Luc Barré, just rewarded by the Renaudot jury, a jury of which Franz-Olivier Giesbert is a member…