Joël Dicker profile

       Joël Dicker's The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair has been widely translated and very successful and is now finally also going to be appearing in English, and in The Telegraph Gaby Wood profiles the author and has some of the story surrounding the book and its success, in Harry Quebert: The French thriller that has taken the world by storm.
       Writers who haven't yet met similar success can take heart in the Dicker story:

The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair is in fact the sixth book Dicker has written. Only one other has been published -- Les derniers jours de nos pères, a book about the Second World War Special Operations Executive, sometimes known as "Churchill's secret army". It came out in January 2012 to little fanfare, and sold no more than a few hundred copies.

       Troublingly, however:

Dicker has been quite relaxed about the translation, and says he was happy to let the editors of the American edition (to be published by Penguin) change things they thought rang false. "It's your territory," he told them.

       It may be their 'territory' but I have relatively little faith in their comprehensive understanding of it -- and would certainly prefer they stuck as close to the original as possible; Penguin's recent efforts with another French bestseller -- Katherine Pancol's The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles -- were anything but reassuring. So I'm still tempted to wade through the original (the local library actually has a few copies ...).
       Pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.