Pirates Rule Sweden

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 9/25/2006

Jan Guillou, one of Sweden's most popular and outspoken novelists, shot straight to the top of the fiction list in late August with Madame Terror, the most recent book in his series featuring hero Carl Hamilton. Terror is published by Piratforlaget (Pirate Publishing), a company cofounded by Guillou and, among others, Liza Marklund, whose The Will of Nobel (also a Piratforlaget title) was #3 at the end of August after spending several weeks in the top spot. Piratforlaget also had the #8 nonfiction book in Sweden last month with Marklund and Lotta Snickare's There Is a Special Place in Hell for Women Who Don't Help Each Other, which examines how women can succeed as leaders.

The French fiction list also had a new #1 at the end of last month. Marc Levy's My Friends, My Loves is a comedic take on two fathers sharing a home where they try to live by two rules: no babysitters and no women allowed in the house. The top nonfiction title in France is by the country's minister of internal affairs, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is eyeing a run for president.

Only two new nonfiction titles made the top 10 list in Spain; the more intriguing work, Carnage in Republican Madrid, is a memoir by Norwegian diplomat Felix Schlayer Altera, who saved scores of people in Spain during the Civil War. The book was first published in Germany in 1938.