What is going on ? There are almost no foreign novels in our fiction list… With the exception of the British mega-seller Ken Follett, whose Weapons of Lighta social fresco located at the beginning of the 19th century, against the backdrop of the industrial revolution and the Napoleonic wars, continues its beautiful epic. With the exception also of the two thriller authors, Harlan Coben (On the traces ofBelfond) and Karin Smirnoff (Millennium (vol. VII). The girl in the eagle’s claws, South Acts). But what about this year’s winners? Why does the novel by the American Louise Erdrich, Sentence (Albin Michel), crowned with foreign Femina, can’t he cross the threshold of the Top 20?
And what about the fiction of South Korean Han Kang (Impossible goodbyestranslated by Pierre Bisiou and Kyungran Choi, Grasset) and the Portuguese Lidia Jorge (Misericordia, translated by Elisabeth Monteiro Rodrigues, Métailié), both Medici prizes for foreign novels? Or even the winner of the 2023 Grand Prize for American Literature, Aleksandar Hemon, for A world of sky and earth published by Calmann-Lévy. Or the Best Foreign Book 2023 awarded to the Irishman Sebastian Barry, author ofIn the good old days of God (Joëlle Losfeld)? Or finally the winner of the prize for the first foreign novel, the British Tom Crewe for The new life (Bourgois).
We could add to this list the great foreign novelists published this fall: the Austrian Robert Seethaler (The Nameless CaféSabine Wespieser), the Venezuelan Karina Sainz Borgo (The Third CountryGallimard), the American David Grann (The Wager ShipwrecksEditions du Sous-sol), the Briton Ian McEwan (Lessons, Gallimard), the Irishman Darragh McKeon (Remembrance SundayBelfond), the Nigerian Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka (Chronicle of the country of the happiest people in the worldThreshold), Irishwoman Maggie O’Farrell (The Wedding PortraitBelfond), the Israeli Zeruya Shalev (Stupor, Gallimard)… In short, there are very many of them who have not been favored by the general public. What a pity ! Be careful not to despair publishers of foreign literature who are likely to drastically reduce their volume in the future.
On the testing side, stability reigns. Only one book appears this week from November 27 to December 3: These great destinies which made history (Plon) by Marc Menant and Christine Kelly, which infiltrates 11th place. Or, from the pen of the two CNews journalists, a journey in the company of Saint-Exupéry, Queen Margot, Marie Curie, Beethoven, Bonaparte, Leonardo da Vinci, Joan of Arc, Christopher Columbus, Jean de La Fontaine, Victor Hugo …