“At ten forty-five o’clock on August 12, 2022, on a sunny Friday morning in upstate New York, I was attacked and nearly murdered by a young man armed with a knife just after taking the stage at the Chautauqua Amphitheater to speak about the importance of keeping writers safe,” writes Salman Rushdie in The knifewhich benefited from a worldwide release on April 16 and which once again takes first place in our test list.
Applauded by the press, his book is praised in L’Express, from the pen of our columnist Abnousse Shalmani, who appreciated the dramatic irony and humor, “the weapon most resistant to all tyrannies”, of the 76-year-old American-British writer of Indian origin, subject of a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini since 1989. She notes: “It’s an understatement to say The knife by Salman Rushdie is welcome to open our eyes, to repeat that “living” is fundamental in this world which applauds the greatness of the martyr confusing executioners and victims in a post-Marxist style exercise.
© / The Express
The second entry of the week, The promise, by Anne Lauvergeon (Grasset, in 7th place) also received honors from L’Express. This is the story of five years of complicity between the former sherpa and deputy secretary general of the Elysée with François Mitterrand. “I would like you to make me a promise, that of one day writing about these years, our exchanges, our conversations,” the president asked him in the summer of 1994. Promise kept, and here we are at the heart of power and a story “that she would especially like to portray a president who is a “geyser of life”, “a lover of his own freedom”, an admired, loved elder who he misses”, reports our journalist Emilie Lanez who went to his encounter.
It is the Palestinian historian and essayist Elias Sanbar who closes the ban on entrants with “The Last War?” : Palestine, October 7, 2023-April 2, 2024 (Gallimard Tracts, 20th rank). The Palestinian ambassador to UNESCO returns to the roots of evil, noting, among other things: “It is enough to go back to what has opposed Palestinian and Israeli societies since 1948 to understand what is existential , on both sides, in the conflict which, since the massacres perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, 2023, has placed Gaza under bombs and caused appalling losses in its civil society.”
We will also recall the astonishing success of the Belgian forensic doctor (and social media star) Philippe Boxho who sells his two books like hotcakes (The dead speak And Interview with a corpse. A forensic doctor makes the dead speak, Kennes, 2nd and 3rd rows), a success deciphered by L’Express from the pen of Agnès Laurent. And we will finally point out the no less incredible longevity of Natacha Calestrémé’s book, The Key to your energy (Albin Michel), great record holder in our list with 130 weeks under the clock (and capitalizing at least some 460,000 copies sold since January 8, 2020).
To conclude, we will highlight the four entries in the fiction list: Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt: The Crossing of Times (vol. IV). The light of happiness (Albin Michel), in 2nd position, Michael McDowell: Katie (Mr. Toussaint Louverture) in 6th row, Eric Giacometti and Jacques Ravenne: The Key and the Cross (Lattès) in 10th place and Alex Aster: The Lightlark Saga (volume II). Nightbane (Lumen) ranked 12th. Novels that we will tell you more about next week.
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