By Jim Milliot | Feb 23, 2018
Elena Ferrante’s The Story of the Lost Child landed in the top spot in France at the end of January and was in second place on Germany’s bestseller list last month. The novel was published in the U.S. in fall 2015 by Europa Editions.
At the end of last month, Still Me by JoJo Moyes was in first place in Germany; the novel has been at the top of PW’s charts as well since its release in early January. Bernhard Schlink’s newest novel, Olga, was in third place on the bestseller list. Schlink had a huge hit in the U.S. in 1995 with The Reader, and his most recent book released in America was The Woman on the Stairs, which Pantheon published last March.
Back in France, two new books followed Lost Child on the fiction list. In second place was Prix Goncourt–winner Pierre Lemaitre with his latest, The Colors of Fire. In the third spot was And Me, I Still Live by Jean d’ Ormesson, the highly respected French novelist of more than 40 books and member of the Académie Française, who died in December.
Two nonfiction titles led the combined bestseller list in the Netherlands in January: Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and A Retrospective of 2017 by Han van Bree. Dan Brown’s Origin was in fifth place. (Origin was also #2 in Spain, #3 in Sweden in fiction, and #4 on Italy’s combined list.)