Bios Head French Fiction

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 2/13/2006

Deciding if James Frey's A Million Little Pieces should be classified as fiction or nonfiction would not be a problem in France, at least in terms of the bestsellers list, since autobiography and biography fall under the fiction column there. Biographies of two great artists take the second and third spot in France this week. Further down the list, American-style fiction is well represented, including State of Fear and Angels and Demons in the fourth and ninth spots, respectively. On the nonfiction side, an intriguing title is The Pretenders, 2007, a look at possible candidates for the French presidency in a year.

Challenging The Historian for the top spot on the fiction list in Spain is The Shadow of the Wind, a thriller set in Barcelona between 1932 and 1966.

On the Swedish fiction bestsellers list, Monika Fagerholm's The American Girl is the story of a teenage boy and girl who die under obscure circumstances in the late 1960s. Fagerholm's first novel, Wonderful Women by the Sea, examined life in Scandinavia during the 1960s and took two Scandinavian literary prizes. It was published in the U.S. in 1998 by New Press; no word on whether New Press has plans for The American Girl.