The official Finnish bestseller lists for the month of November have been released and Lars Kepler’s Lazarus is No. 1 on the list for translated hardcover fiction. The novel tops the list for the second consecutive month. Jo Nesbø’s Macbeth comes in at No. 2 and Liza Marklund’s Black Pearl Farm is No. 5 on the same list.
Lars Kepler’s seventh Joona Linna novel, Lazarus, refuses to budge from its No. 1 spot on the official Swedish hardcover, audio and e-book bestseller lists for week 49 (December 3-9). The long-running bestseller is joined at the top by Stina Jackson’s award-winning The Silver Road, which claims the last No. 1 spot, in the paperback category. Jackson also appears at No. 2 on the e-book list.
Hjorth & Rosenfeldt likewise feature on multiple lists with their A Higher Justice. The novel comes in at No. 3 on the hardcover list, and No. 4 on the audio and e-book list.
The hardcover list sees Jonas Gardell’s lauded In Memory of an Unconditional Love climb one placement to No. 4. Niklas Natt och Dag stays put at No. 3 on the paperback list with The Wolf and the Watchman, and Ulf Lundell’s Weekdays nabs a No. 3 position as well, on the audio list. Anders de la Motte’s Dead of Winter climbs the lists as well, coming in at No. 5 on the audio one.
Sweden’s leading newspaper Dagens Nyheter has chosen Ulf Lundell’s Weekdays as one of their Best Books of 2018. Literary critic Björn Wiman calls it “indubitably the best that [Lundell] has written in many years. /…/ Spellbinding.”
Sofia Lundberg’s The Red Address Book has been chosen as a January 2019 LibraryReads title in the US. Based on the nominations of librarians all across America, the LibraryReads list highlights the most highly anticipated books coming out that month. Brenda O’Brien of Woodridge Public Library, Illinois, gives the following motivation for her choice of Lundbergs’s debut novel:
“A compelling, charming, and ultimately heartwarming read. For fans of Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk and The Japanese Lover.”
Lars Kepler’s Lazarus claims the No. 1 spot on the e-book bestseller list for the seventh week in a row in Norway. Jørn Lier Horst’s The Innermost Room likewise stays put on the official list, coming in No. 3 also this week.
Jørn Lier Horst & Hans Jørgen Sandnes, Jo Nesbø and Bobbie Peers are three of the most sold authorships of children’s fiction in Norway during the past decade. Jørn Lier Horst & Hans Jørgen Sandnes succeed in the impressive feat of claiming ten out of fifty positions on the list, which includes both translated and domestic titles. All ten books are from the author and illustrator duo’s popular Detective Agency No. 2 series. In order, the titles are: Operation Thundercloud, Operation Summer Island, Operation Sunset, Operation Shadowman, Operation Windblast, Operation Plastic Bag, Operation Ghost, Operation Bronze Square, Operation Daffodil, and Operation Circus.
Jo Nesbø likewise lays claim to multiple positions, featuring four times on the list with his Doctor Proctor series. Doctor Proctor’s Fart Power, book one, comes in at No. 4. A bit further down on the list it is joined by Doctor Proctor and the Time-Travel Bath Bomb, Doctor Proctor and the End of the World. Maybe, and Doctor Proctor and the Great Gold Robbery.
Bobbie Peers too makes an appearance on the 2008-2018 list with his children’s book debut William Wenton and the Luridium Thief.
Hans Rosenfeldt’s Swedish-Danish crime TV series The Bridge has not only gained great success in Scandinavia, but become hugely popular around the globe and received several awards.
The latest in the line of tributes is one from The New York Times. The newspaper listed The Bridge as the second best foreign series of the year and describes the fourth season as “complicated,” “spine-tingling,” and “occasionally quite funny.”
The British newspaper The Observer’s critics have compiled a list of their must reads of 2018, and one of the ten titles in the Thriller category is Jo Nesbø’s Macbeth. Literary critic Alison Flood writes the following about Nesbø’s retelling of the classic:
“Macbeth by Jo Nesbø (Vintage) […] transport[s] Shakespeare’s tragedy to a poverty-stricken, drug ridden Scottish industrial town, turning the protagonist into a Swat commander and leaving the reader delighting in discovering how the Norwegian author has transposed everything from Hecate to Lady Macbeth.”
Arne Dahl’s Hunted has been shortlisted for the Dutch Thrillzone Awards 2018 in the category ‘Best Translated Thriller’. The winners will be announced on December 24th.
To see the list of nominees and to cast your vote, click “Read more” below.
Fredrik Backman’s Britt-Marie Was Here is the winner of a LiveLib Readers’ Choice Awards in Russia, taking home the prize for ‘Best Translated Fiction’. This means that the novel has qualified for the super final, in which the winners of all categories compete for a final award. The last day of voting is December 19th.
Click “Read more” below to cast your vote.
Bulgaria, EMAS
Two-book deal closed by Emma Granberg
Greece, Memento
Closed by Emma Granberg
China, Beijing Science and Technology
Five-book deal closed by The Grayhawk Agency on behalf of Ida Schabbauer
Poland, Smak Slowa
Two-book deal closed by Julia Angelin
Lithuania, Pflaŭmbaŭm Publishing House
Closed by Emma Granberg
Germany, Hoffmann und Campe
Closed by Julia Angelin
[A] brilliant thriller. /…/ [Winter Grave] is unsettling, occasionally hilarious and constantly thrilling. /…/ I make no secret of the fact I’m a fan of Heine Bakkeid’s writing (…). Winter Grave is also dark noir on an elite level.
– Harstad Tidene
You’re the One I Write About tells a tale as old as time. But it does so with fire and not without finesse. /…/ The result is a book you can read during a free period, but will carry with you much longer. Why? Perhaps because Åstot succeeds in capturing exactly how words fall between young people in this moment.
– Expressen
The Clan /…/ is recommended for anyone looking for a hard-hitting, contemporary thriller that delves into themes of power, loyalty, and violence.
– Münchner Merkur
The most gripping thriller of the summer.
– Frankfurter Rundschau
Engman’s book is more than a thriller; it portrays a society in rules no longer apply, and power is wielded at will.
– Bremer Nachrichten
Machines are getting smarter while humans seem to have succumbed to brain rot. Tasks that once required human brainpower are increasingly being handled by AI. But what happens to our brains when we stop making an effort?