Dan Brown’s Inferno is still selling well in many international markets, but a few notable titles began to dominate European fiction bestsellers lists in July.
The most-buzzed-about title on July’s international charts was Joël Dicker’s The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair, ranking above Inferno in Italy and hitting #1 in Spain. The book, 28-year-old Dicker’s second, garnered lots of attention at the Frankfurt Book Fair last fall. Set along the Eastern Seaboard, in New York City and New Hampshire, the noir thriller follows Marcus Goldman, a successful young writer, as he attempts to prove the innocence of his mentor, who is accused of murdering a 15-year-old girl. Originally published by two small independent houses in Paris and Switzerland (the author’s native country), last year it won the Grand Prix du roman from the Académie française and was longlisted for France’s prestigious Prix Goncourt. The title was also one of France’s top 10 bestselling fiction books in July, and was published in Germany by Piper Verlag on August 13. MacLehose Press—a Quercus imprint that will also be handling U.S. rights—will publish in the U.K. next May.
In Italy, Pope Francis’s encyclicals, published in three different editions, were scattered among the country’s top 20 bestselling fiction and nonfiction titles, landing in the #2 spot with The Light of Faith. The presence of the encyclicals, coupled with the very literary And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini, which ranked #1 on the combined list, marked a notable shift from recent Italian bestseller lists, which have been monopolized by erotic fiction in the wake of the Fifty Shades phenomenon.
International Bestsellers
Germany
| Fiction | Nonfiction | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Inferno Inferno Dan Brown Bastei Lübbe | 1913 1913 Florian Illies S. Fischer |
| 2 | Silber. Das erste Buch der Träume Silber: The First Book of Dreams Kerstin Gier Fischer FJB | 5 Dinge, die Sterbende am meisten bereuen The Top Five Regrets of the Dying Bronnie Ware Arkana |
| 3 | Er ist wieder da He’s Back Timur Vermes Eichborn | Das große Los Jackpot Meike Winnemuth Knaus |
Spain
| Fiction | Nonfiction | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | La verdad sobre el caso Harry Quebert The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair Joël Dicker Alfaguara | La enzima prodigiosa The Enzyme Factor Hiromi Shinya Aguilar |
| 2 | Pídeme lo que quieras, o déjame Ask What You Want, Or Let Me Megan Maxwell Esencia | El sueño de mi desvelo The Dream of My Insomnia Antoni Daimiel Corner |
| 3 | Inferno Inferno Dan Brown Planeta | Destroza este diarior Wreck This Journal Keri Smith Paidos |
Italy
| Combined | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | E l’eco rispose And the Mountains Echoed Khaled Hosseini Piemme | 4 | Inferno Inferno Dan Brown Mondadori |
| 2 | Lumen fidei The Light of Faith Pope Francis Libreria Editrice Vaticana | 5 | Un covo di vipere A Nest of Vipers Andrea Camilleri Sellerio Editore Palermo |
| 3 | La verità sul caso Harry Quebert The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair Joël Dicker Bompiani | 6 | Lumen fidei. Enciclica sulla fede The Light of Faith: Encyclical on Faith Pope Francis San Paolo Edizioni |
*This article has been corrected. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Allen Lane will be publishing an English translation of The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair in Canada. Editions de Fallois holds these rights.
