Hard, hard, to find a place in the sun if you haven’t had an award-winning novel. Indeed, the winners of this 2023 school year take the lion’s share with: first of all, the Goncourt Jean-Baptiste Andrea prize. Day by day he savors the laurels awarded to his river novel, Watch over her (The Iconoclast), which is already close to 100,000 copies sold, well before Christmas shopping. Behind him, Neige Sinno, crowned with the Femina prize. It is an understatement to say that the Ladies of Femina had a hollow nose: its brilliant and burning literary story, Sad tiger (PO L.), exceeds 75,000 copies. Then comes a newcomer in the person of Martial Caroff, winner of the Quai des Orfèvres prize, a very prescriptive award as usual. What is less usual, on the other hand, is the CV of the distinguished. Yes, Martial Caroff is neither a police captain nor a retired commissioner, but a lecturer in geology at the University of Brest and a specialist in ancient volcanoes, well versed in thrillers. Do not thank me ! , (Fayard) his award-winning book, tells the story of a specialist in Paleolithic geology who collapses and dies mid-course. The investigation is being carried out by the Parisian judicial police…
At the same time, we will note the presence of Cédric Sapin-Defour, the record holder for weeks of presence in our fiction list (21!) with Its smell after the rain (Stock). We can bet that his very recent Thirty Million Friends Literary Prize should not stop his triumphant march (140,000 copies since March 29). Good news, Dominique Barbéris, grand prize winner of the French Academy, remains firmly in the Top 20 with A way of loving (Gallimard), while Gaspard Koenig, Jean Giono prize, participates in the ball. Humus (The Observatory) climbs several places even though in this week of November 13 to 19, it had not yet received the Interallié prize awarded this Wednesday 22. Let us finally note the arrival, in 19th place, by the Renaudot Prize winner, Ann Scott, for The Insolent (Calmann-Lévy).
It’s not just the award-winners of course: there are also the stars, like Ken Follett, Patrick Modiano, Maxime Chattam or Marc Levy, romance or fantasy authors, such as Laura Swan, Lucinda Riley and Christopher Paolini…
Without wanting to upset all these beautiful people, let us point out that the 40th volume of the adventures of Asterix, The white Iris (not listed like all comics in this list) is close to a million copies sold…
As for the essays, we will just note that the winners of the Médicis essay prizes (Laure Murat, Proust, family novel, Robert Laffont) and Femina essay (Hugo Micheron, Anger and forgetting, Gallimard) hold their ground alongside the big names of the genre: Franz-Olivier Giesbert, Thomas Pesquet, Amin Maalouf, Patrick Boucheron, Frédéric Lenoir, Gilles Kepel, Charles Pépin, Catherine Nay, Jérôme Fourquet…