Books in bulk

French publishers do not believe in selling titles by attrition or stealth. Each September just about every book remotely marketable is rolled out to the bookshops: 633 new titles this year alone, in a ritual known as la rentrée littéraire.

It is a nightmare for PR directors because of the impossibility of promoting simultaneously such a quantity of books. Many fail to be displayed in bookshops at all, let alone reviewed, and end up quietly pulped. No one can explain how this state of affairs has arisen: only 300 books, more than enough even then, were released in September five years ago.
 
Bilinguists who like to have an edge at English literary lunches are hard put to find a new French book to talk about that is likely to create an impact in the international market. One exception among French authors might be Michel Houellebecq, whose best-seller “Les Particules Elémentaires” (“Atomised”) came out in 1998, followed by the equally controversial  “Plateforme” in 2001. His latest novel, “La Possibilité d'une Ile” (“The Potential of an Island”) was published in Paris last month. Seen as this year’s sensation, it is due out in English in the UK in November. Set 2,000 years into the future, this novel traces the morally bankrupt lives of a cloned sect on the island of Lanzarote, where each member aged over 50 provides a DNA sample and commits suicide. 

Another book expected to appear quickly in English is “Sulphuric Acid”, by Amélie Nothomb, one of the young writers of whom it has been unkindly said that they keep one eye on Hollywood in every chapter. Her latest book describes an unquestionably dramatic concept: a reality television show called “Concentration”, in which the guards take on the contestants and the ultimate penalty is a place in the death camp.

However, most of the titles sold in large numbers in France are translations of UK or American writers. French literary prizes are largely discredited, with long-serving time-servers on the juries, who tend to stifle ideas rather than encourage them.