Politics Sweep French List

Nine of the 10 top titles on the French nonfiction bestseller list at the end of April were new, and with the country's presidential campaign reaching a climax during the month, it's no surprise that politics dominated the charts. A biography of runner-up Ségolène Royal was in the second spot at the end of the month, while the final edition of winner Nicolas Sarkozy's election program, Together, landed at #4. Little Nicolas, Ségolène and Their Friends, a portrait of all the presidential contenders, was at #5.

In Germany, Pope Benedict XVI's Jesus of Nazareth debuted in the top spot; it was published in the U.S. last week by Doubleday. A couple of American authors cracked the nonfiction list in Spain last month: Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist, published here by Oxford University Press, was at #3, while The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine debuted in the #8 spot. It was published in the U.S. by Broadway.

The French treat biographies as fiction, so that's why John Grisham's The Innocent Man landed in that column in the #4 spot last month. Events marking the 80th birthday of Gabriel García Márquez and the 40th anniversary of the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude combined to put that classic in the second spot on Spain's fiction list in April.