Germany Looks At 60 and '60s

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 3/19/2007

Following the addition of Italy to our international bestseller lists in January, Germany joined the ranks in February. Top sellers on the nonfiction list touch on topics that have been the focus of many books on the U.S. lists. The #1 nonfiction title is an account by a young man who takes an extended hike to find himself—in this case, trekking on the Pilgrim Trail in Spain. At #2, The Graduate is a humorous look at the challenges of becoming old, written by Petra Gerster, a TV host. High Times, naturally, deals with the 1960s and is the autobiography of German sex kitten Uschi Obermaier, who was involved, at various points, with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Jimi Hendrix.

Measuring the World, #1 in fiction, has been on the German charts for more than 70 weeks and was published in the U.S. in November by Pantheon. In third place, The Silent Girl is the first novel in about 10 years from Danish novelist Peter Hoeg, whose Smilla's Sense of Snow was a surprise hit in the U.S. in the early 1990s, from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The fourth place fiction book has an irresistible title: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian—it's a debut novel about an elderly widower's plans to marry a big-breasted 30-something woman he meets at a Ukrainian social club in England.

France had two new top sellers in February: Digital Fortress finally landed there, and a collection of interviews with Jacques Chirac topped the nonfiction list.