Book sales: when the classification turns into a Spanish inn

What diversity! Rarely have our prize lists been so inhomogeneous. Difficult then to draw lessons on the aspirations of readers as their curiosity seems to be indulging in all directions. Thus essays: what common points between the Memoirs of Prince Harry, the memories of the deportee to Birkenau, Ginette Kolinka, and those of the former Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot?

Religious or masculine violence (Richard Malka, Mathieu Palain), reflections on origins or desire (Gérald Bronner, Frédéric Lenoir), tributes to the deceased (Adèle Van Reeth, Jérôme Garcin), “glucosic” revolution (Jessie Inchauspé), psychoanalysis of cats (Claude Béata)… We find everything in the libraries of our readers. Who also make a guard of honor to authors as unlike as the young Algerian Sarah Rivens (who achieves a hat-trick!) and the Italian-Swiss political adviser Giuliano da Empoli, winner of the French Academy’s novel prize (365,000 sold copies of his Kremlin Mage). Although… Aren’t they both ultimately dealing with “dark romance”?

9. Nobody’s Son

By Jean-Francois Pasques

If all the prizes are not as prescriptive as yesterday, the Quai des Orfèvres prize, created in 1946, continues to propel strangers. Crowned in November, police captain Jean-François Pasques multiplies the buns with his story of a homeless man found drowned in the Tuileries gardens, of which he has already sold more than 150,000 copies.

2. A happy life

By Ginette Kolinka, with Marion Ruggieri

98 years old on February 8, and still the same appetite for life. The Holocaust survivor, who rubbed shoulders with Simone Veil in the death camps, continues to transmit to schoolchildren in France. And readers. After Back to Birkenau, in 2019 (130,000 copies sold), here is A happy life, or the visit of the Parisian apartment in which she has lived since she was ten years old.

Britain

Godkiller

By Hannah Kaner

Not much is known about young Hannah Kaner except that she has her heart in Scotland and her roots in the north of England. But also that Godkillerthe first part (and first novel) of a fantasy trilogy, rises to the top of the charts of the Sunday Times. It is about an old country of Middren where the king believes he has banished all the gods.