What are people reading around the world? Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and The Girl on the Train are still high on the bestseller lists in many countries, and on the nonfiction front we noticed that Bruce Springsteen's new memoir Born to Run is doing very well in Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, as well as here in the U.S. This month we took a close look at the bestseller lists in Canada, Dominican Republic, Israel, Portugal, and Turkey to see what fiction titles are popular with readers there. In most cases, we found a mix of local authors and international bestsellers like Paolo Coelho's latest, The Spy. 

Canada

When we checked The Globe and Mail’s Hardcover Fiction Bestsellers list early last week, John Grisham’s latest, The Whistler, was at the top, followed by Night School by Lee Child, and the final installment in Jeffrey Archer’s Clifton Chronicles, This Was a Man was number three. Canadian authors were in the fourth and fifth slots: Man Booker Prize nominee Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien and The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena. All these titles are available in English at NYPL. Many other books by John Grisham are available in Spanish, Russian, and Polish, as well as a one or two in otgher languages, including Italian, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese.

French Canadian authors dominated the French language bestseller list compiled by Les Libraries when we checked last week, with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (Harry Potter et l'enfant maudit) and the recent Prix Goncourt winner also near the top. Conversations avec un enfant curieux by Michel Tremblay was in the top spot. Many of of Tremblay’s works are available in the original French in the Research Collections, as well as in English translation. L’autre reflet by Patrick Sénécal is the next fiction title on the list. Sénécal’s previous novels Faims is available to borrow in the original French, and the film 5150 Rue des Ormes / 5150 Elm's Way, based on his novel of the same name, is also available. La femme qui fuit by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette was next on the list. This title is not currently available at the Library, but  Inch’allah, a 2013 film written and directed by the author is available at NYPL. Chanson Douce [Sweet Song] by Leïla Slimani, winner of this year’s Prix Goncourt was also high on the French Canadian bestseller list. Faber has acquired the English translation rights for the novel.

Dominican Republic

When we checked the bestseller lists on the Cuesta Libros website last week, The Spy / La espia, the latest novel by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho was at the top of the fiction list. NYPL currently has copies of to borrow in English and Spanish. Other books by Paulo Coelho are available to borrow in the original Portuguese, English, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Polish, Korean, Italian, and one or two in French, Hebrew, Hungarian, German, and Albanian.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child /Harry Potter y el legado maldito was next on the list followed by Los herederos de la tierra [Heirs of the Earth] by Ildefonso Falcones, a sequel to the bestselling historical novel La catedral del mar / Cathedral of the Sea. This book has not been translated into English yet. Other novels by Falcones are currently available to borrow or download from NYPL in Spanish, English, Italian, and Hebrew.

The most recent novel by renowned Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Cinco Esquinas [Five Corners], was next on the top fiction list at Cuesta Libros. This novel is currently available to borrow in the original Spanish; it has not been translated into English yet. Many other books by the Nobel laureate are available to borrow in Spanish, English (translations by Edith Grossman), as well as some in Russian,  and one or two in Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew, and Polish.

 

Paula Hawkins's international bestseller La Chica del Tren / The Girl on the Train completed the top five. The Girl on the Train is currently available to borrow from NYPL in English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, French, Polish, Italian, and Hebrew, and as an e-book in German.

Israel

Fiction by Israeli authors tops the bestseller list at the online bookseller Steimatsky this week.Historical novels by Sara Aharoni, [Mrs. Rothschild’s Love] אהבתה של גברת רוטשילד, and Nurith Gertz, [An Ocean Between Us] ים ביני לבינך are numbers one and two with [The Clothes Whisperer] החיים ומה שלבשתי, a comic novel by Shelly Gross at number three.

 

English language authors in translation round out the fiction bestseller list. One Plus One by JoJo Moyes is number four. This title is also available at NYPL in Spanish and Russian. Translations of other novels by Jojo Moyes are currently available to borrow in Russian, Spanish, Korean, Polish, and Italian. The thriller Black List by Brad Thor is also on the list, followed by The Silkworm, the second installment in Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike series. Robert Galbraith’s novels are available to borrow in Spanish, Russian, Polish, Chinese, and Portuguese as well as in English.

Portugal

Portuguese authors and international bestsellers were both high on the bestseller list at Bertrand Livreiros when we looked last week. Two by Two / Só Nós Dois, the latest by Nicholas Sparks topped the fiction list. NYPL has a large selection of novels by Nicholas Sparks in Spanish and Russian, as well as some in Vietnamese, Italian, Polish, and Hebrew. Two by Two is currently available in English.

 

One of Portugal’s most popular writers, José Rodrigues dos Santos, was next on the list with his latest thriller, Vaticanum [Vatican]. Some of dos Santos’s earlier thrillers are available to

borrow from the Library in Spanish, and Fórmula de Deus / Formule de Dieu / The Einstein Enigma is available in French. The original Portuguese versions of Dos Santos’s novels and some English translations are available in the Research Collections. Portuguese writer Raul Minh'alma was also in the top five with Larga quem não te agarra [Let go of the ones that don’t grab you]. Minh’alma’s work is not available in English.

 

Other books in the fiction top ten include The Girl on the Train / A Rapariga no Comboio by Paula Hawkins, My Brilliant Friend / A Amiga Genial by Elena Ferrante, Jackdaws / Nome de Código: Leoparda by Ken Follett, and Police / Policia, Jo Nesbo’s 10th Harry Hole mystery. Police is available to borrow in English, Russian, Spanish, and Polish. The library has other titles by Jo Nesbo in Italian, Korean. Books by Ken Follett are available to borrow in Spanish, Russian, Chinese, as well as in English. My Brilliant Friend  is currently available to borrow in the original Italian, in English, French, Spanish, and Polish.

 

Turkey

We looked at the bestsellers at two of Turkey’s largest online booksellers last week,  D & R and Idefix. Some titles in translation that appeared on both lists were The Spy / Casus by Paolo Coelho, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child / Harry Potter ve Lanetli Çocuk, and George Orwell’s 1984. NYPL currently has copies of 1984 to borrow in English, Spanish, Russian, Polish, and Arabic. Müptezeller [Mistakes] the latest novel by Turkish writer Emrah Serbes was also high on the bestseller lists at both booksellers. One of Serbes’s novels, The King of Taksim Square / Deliduman has been translated into English.

 

An interesting title on Turkey’s bestseller lists is Madonna in a Fur Coat / Kürk Mantolu Madonna by Sabahattin Ali, first published in 1943 and translated into English in 2016. In May of this year translator Maureen Freely wrote in The Guardian that “for the past three years, it has topped the bestseller lists in Turkey, outselling Orhan Pamuk. It is read, loved and wept over by men and women of all ages, but most of all by young adults. And no one seems able to explain quite why.”

 

 In May we checked the fiction bestseller lists in Germany, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, and Russia, and in July we looked at bestseller lists from France, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, and Sweden. September took us to China, Nigeria, Poland, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates. Do you check the bestseller lists from any other countries? What have you discovered? Let us know in the comments section below.