Book sales: Albin Michel and Flammarion at the zenith, Hachette absent from the debates

While Vivendi (Bolloré group) is preparing to sell Editis (2nd French publishing group) to businessman Daniel Kretinsky and to take the reins of Lagardère, the parent company of Hachette (the leader), the battle is played without them in our list of the top 30 fiction and essays. Indeed, it is Albin Michel, owned by Francis Esménard, and Flammarion (Madrigall group run by Antoine Gallimard), which monopolize the best sales these days.

For the first, the harvest is impressive, with nine distinguished authors, including Katherine Pancol, Jean-Christophe Grangé, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Mélissa Da Costa… As for Flammarion, it places two titles, with Fred Vargas and Virginie Grimaldi, on the first steps of the podium and also seizes four other trophies on the test side, with Michel Houellebecq, Didier Eribon, Jacques Attali and Fabrice Midal (while Gallimard points with three essayists). The hour of the Bolloré monopoly has not yet come. Marianne Payot

12 And This Is How We Will Live

By Douglas Kennedy

Nice start for the 15th novel by Francophile Douglas Kennedy. Barely published and already covered extensively by the press (The worldFrance Inter, The Obs, etc.), his anticipation story hits the mark as it shows a divided America in the grip of the worst evils. With on the one hand, a center overwhelmed by Christian fundamentalists, and on the other, “libertarian” coasts under general surveillance. A paying nightmare.

6. A summer with Jankélévitch

By Cynthia Fleury

It’s settled like music paper. Each year, at the same time, the book taken from the France Inter program “A summer with” enters our list, and that, whatever the great classic consecrated and “accompanying it”. After Colette, Rimbaud, Homer, Pascal, Machiavelli, etc., here is the philosopher Jankélévitch (1903-1985) by the philosopher and psychoanalyst Cynthia Fleury. An “almost nothing” that does a lot.

Pua

Por Lorenzo Silva

Prolific author of successful thrillers since the publication, in 1998, ofA hanging woman, the 57-year-old from Madrid is now publishing a thriller set in an undetermined land and whose hero, a former secret agent, who was once involved in a “dirty war”, sees the past resurrect. Her Puacelebrated by the press, took 2nd place in the winners ofEl Cultural.