A careful eye would notice in these sales charts from April 29 to May 5 a definite decline of Joël Dicker, Michael McDowell, Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Guillaume Musso, Bernard Minier, Ana Huang and even Morgane Moncomble , to name only the novelists. What does this mean? Nothing, because in view of last week’s viaduct, the data provided by Edistat does not come from 800 points of sale, bookstores, specialized supermarkets and websites, as usual, but only from 400 points of sale.
Which should not prevent us from citing the entrants of the week: There are six on the fiction side, starting with Franck Thilliez who thus takes first place on the podium with Norferville (Fleuve éditions), printed in 180,000 copies. It is about a detective and criminologist from Lyon, Teddy Schaffran, who learns that the body of his daughter was discovered in a very isolated mining town in the Far North of Quebec, Norferville, not far from an indigenous reserve. And who drops everything to go and investigate on site… Following him, in 3rd position, Virginie Grimaldi, also a purveyor of repeated bestsellers, presents with Bigger than the sky (Flammarion), his 10th novel. It deals with the crossed destinies of Elsa and Vincent, two patients of the same psychiatrist who meet regularly in the waiting room. Also appearing, in 6th position, is the American Scarlett St. Clair with volume IV of her series Hades and Persephone (vol. IV), A touch of Chaos (Hugo Roman).
Less expected, the flamboyant arrival of Philippe Collin in 8th place with his first novel, The Ritz Bartender (Albin Miche). Building on the reputation of its successful podcasts (around Léon Blum and Louis-Ferdinand Céline) on France Inter, the history-loving journalist takes us back to the 1940s with, as the central character, Frank Meier, the bartender Austrian (and Jewish) from the famous palace on Place Vendôme, around which all the Nazi elite of the Occupation gravitated as well as Ernst Jünger, Sacha Guitry and Coco Chanel. He is Italian and enters, like a metronome, in our list of bestsellers with each of his publications. It’s Erri De Luca, of course. With The Rules of Mikado (Gallimard), He takes us into the middle of the mountain in the company of a young 15-year-old runaway Slovenian gypsy and an old hiker. Nothing to do with Laurent Gounelle whose novel, An almost perfect world, appears at Mazarine (he followed his new boss, Lise Boëll). Two universes collide in this Almost perfect worldthat of the “Regulars”, followers of a hyperdeveloped, hyperconnected society, ensuring the well-being of individuals, and that of the “Exiles”, rebels faithful to a certain philosophy of life…
“What a liberation!”
On the testing side, three rebels to the status quo. They too are moving the lines. Thus the novelist, essayist and columnist at L’Express Abnousse Shalmani who lands in 11th place with Secularism, I write your name (The Observatory). “Secularism is the Republican promise kept,” she explains in an interview to be read on the L’Express website. Secularism allows us to be at the same time the children of Lamartine and Aimé Césaire, to be a compatriot of Joséphine Baker and Albert Camus, of Cioran as of Victor Hugo. Secular France only recognizes the citizen whatever their religion, their ethnicity, their color, their sex, their social origin. !”
Three places behind her, another woman, Israeli journalist Lee Yaron who publishes October 7 (Grasset). In this investigation into the black day of October 7, the deadliest for the Jewish people since the Second World War, the author gives a face to these women, men and children, atrociously killed, tortured or kidnapped. Finally, after rocking the airwaves of France Inter, the critic and literary historian William Marx infiltrates 16th place with A summer with Don Quixote (Equateurs/France Inter), just published.
3802 BOOKSTORE Palmares 2
© / The Express
.