Lots of new titles hit international bestsellers' lists in September, especially in Germany and France. German author Cornelia Funke, whose Inkheart series was published in the U.S. by Scholastic, debuted at #1 in September in Germany with her newest novel, Reckless. The first in a new series, Reckless was released last month in the U.S. by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers and was #9 on the PW children's fiction list. Dutch author Jussi Adler-Olsen's The Pheasant Killers landed in second place in Germany last month, one spot ahead of his previously published The Woman in the Cage. Killers is the second in the Department Q mystery series; although the books have done well in parts of Europe, Adler-Olsen has not been published in the U.S.
Eight of the top 10 fiction bestsellers in France were new in September, led by The Map and the Territory by controversial French novelist Michel Houellebecq. Houellebecq has been making the media rounds in France and is interviewed in the current Paris Review. His The Possibility of an Island was published in the U.S. by Vintage, and Map will be published as a Knopf hardcover and Vintage paperback, with the hardcover likely to be out in 2012. The highest debuting Spanish novel, Ines and Joy, is a work of historical fiction centered around the Spanish exile guerrillas' invasion of Valle de Arán, a remote valley in the Catalonian Pyrenees, in 1944.
Political-tinged works made a splash in nonfiction last month. A former member of the German federal reserve bank, Thilo Sarrazin, drew international attention over his criticism of Germany's Muslim population, which is the heart of his top-selling nonfiction book. A biography of French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy landed in second place in France last month.
France
FICTION
La carte et le territoire
The Map and the Territory
Michel Houellebecq
Flammarion
Une forme de vie
A Form of Life
Amélie Nothomb
Albin Michel
Une si belle école
Such a Beautiful School
Christian Signol
Albin Michel
NONFICTION
C'est une chose étrange à la fin que le monde
The World Is Such a Strange Thing After All
Jean d'Ormesson
Robert Laffont
Carla, une vie secrète
Carla: A Secret Life
Besma Lahouri
Flammarion
Absolument dé-bor-dée! Ou Le paradoxe du fonctionnaire
Absolutely O-ver-whelmed! The Paradox of the Clerks
Zoé Shepard
Spain
FICTION
El tiempo entre costuras
The Times Between Seams
Maria Duenas
Temas de Hoy
Inés y la alegría
Ines and Joy
Almudena Grandes
Tusquets
Se lo que estas pensando
Think of a Number
John Verdon
Roca
NONFICTION
No consigo adelgazar
The Dukan Diet
Pierre Dukan
RBA
El secreto
The Secret
Rhonda Byrne
Urano
Los silencios del larguero
Silence of the Bar
José Ramón de la Morena
Aguilar
Albin Michel
Germany
FICTION
Reckless
Reckless
Cornelia Funke
Dressler
Schändung
The Pheasant Killers
Jussi Adler-Olsen
DTV Premium
Erbarmen
The Woman in the Cage
Jussi Adler-Olsen
DTV Premium
NONFICTION
Deutschland schafft sich ab
Germany Does Away with Itself
Thilo Sarrazin
DVA
3,096 Tage
3,096 Days
Natascha Kampusch
List
Das Ende der Geduld
The End of Patience
Kirsten Heisig
Herder
