As I mentioned last week, Michel Houellebecq's Soumission has been a phenomenal success in France.
It's now come out in Germany -- and its run continues: boersenblatt.net reports that it easily debuted at number one on the German bestseller lists, that 150,000 copies have sold, and tha it is going into its fourth printing (within a week of publication). So, yeah, it's doing reasonably well.
Meanwhile, the US/UK publishers are ... still getting their act together ? UK publication is slated for the fall, while the Americans seem to have been totally taken by surprise that anyone might be interested in this (his longtime publisher Knopf losing the title to Farrar, Straus & Giroux -- out of indifference ? -- who themselves seem a bit overwhelmed by what they've lucked into).
If fiction in translation is really being taken more seriously in the US/UK you'd (well, I'd ...) figure they could get a potentially 'hot' title like this out within a reasonable time. (Hey, even the Italian translation is already out. Remember that the next time you make fun of Italy's ridiculous economy and extol the superiority of all business-conducting-ways in the US. Ha.)
It's now come out in Germany -- and its run continues: boersenblatt.net reports that it easily debuted at number one on the German bestseller lists, that 150,000 copies have sold, and tha it is going into its fourth printing (within a week of publication). So, yeah, it's doing reasonably well.
Meanwhile, the US/UK publishers are ... still getting their act together ? UK publication is slated for the fall, while the Americans seem to have been totally taken by surprise that anyone might be interested in this (his longtime publisher Knopf losing the title to Farrar, Straus & Giroux -- out of indifference ? -- who themselves seem a bit overwhelmed by what they've lucked into).
If fiction in translation is really being taken more seriously in the US/UK you'd (well, I'd ...) figure they could get a potentially 'hot' title like this out within a reasonable time. (Hey, even the Italian translation is already out. Remember that the next time you make fun of Italy's ridiculous economy and extol the superiority of all business-conducting-ways in the US. Ha.)