English novelist Ken Follett’s geopolitical thriller Never topped the combined bestseller list in Italy at the end of December. At #2 in Italy was Donato Carrisi’s 11th novel, The House Without Memories, a mystery about an amnesiac boy. Carrisi is published in English by Little, Brown. J.K. Rowling’s holiday story The Christmas Pig was at #6 on the list.
Another translation, Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, landed at #2 on the combined bestseller list in the Netherlands in late December, bested only by Amali, a short book about the future queen of the Netherlands by comedian Claudia de Breij. In the third spot was I’m Going to Live, an autobiographical novel by 23-year-old Dutch Turkish author Lale Gül, about a young woman’s strict Muslim upbringing in Amsterdam.
Readers in Spain snapped up copies of Carmen Mola’s Beast, winner of the 2021 Planeta Prize, moving it to #1 on the country’s fiction list in late December. There was controversy over the prize this year when it was revealed that Mola, who has written several bestselling mysteries, is actually the pseudonym of three male collaborators. Following Mola was Follett’s Never, with perennial bestseller Arturo Perez-Reverte in the #3 spot with his latest, The Italian, a thriller about a romance between a bookseller and an Italian naval saboteur during WWII.
