US novels are catching on like wildfire in France, with almost 20 percent of next season s 659 new books penned in America.
Of the 229 novels translated into French for release from September, 121 are American; including veteran Philip Roth s 2008 Exit Ghost that sees the return of Nathan Zuckerman and a host of writers newer to the French reading public.
Among them first-timer Charles Bock s acclaimed Beautiful Children set in Las Vegas, Lush Life by Richard Price, the novelist and screenwriter most recently involved in The Wire, and Foreskin s Lament: A Memoir by New Yorker Shalom Auslander.
Works originally written in Spanish are also seeing a rise in popularity, with 22 translations next season against 13 last year. A novel set in 1920s Barcelona by Spain s Carlos Ruiz Zafon is among the top 10 print runs with 200,000 copies due to be released.
Translations from Italian, Russian and Portuguese are down as are those from Scandinavia after the success of the Millennium-series books.
Indian writer Tarun J. Tejpal s latest book The Story of My Assassins is among four works from Asia also translated into French. -AFP
