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Stieg Larsson was the top European writer in 2010, according to an analysis of bestsellers charts published in UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden.
The Swede beat the American writer Dan Brown into second place even though Brown's The Lost Symbol was a top ten hit in seven territories, four more than Larsson's Millennium trilogy.
Ken Follett was the only British writer to make the top 10 list, with Fall of Giants charting in five countries: the UK, Italy, Spain, France and Germany. Brown was one of two Americans in the top 10 list, with the thriller writer also joined by vampire specialist Stephenie Meyer.
Sandwiched between Brown and Meyer in third place, was Tatiana de Rosnay, the Paris-born writer of Sarah’s Key, originally written in English and published in the UK by John Murray. Her new book A Secret Kept will be published in the UK on 15th April by Pan Macmillan.
Overall, eight of the top 25 European fiction authors wrote in English, and 17 in other languages. Half of the list presents authors who only charted in their country of origin. Sweden and the US were the dominant sources of authors, with five each in the top 25. But Sweden had more in the top 10, three, Larsson, Läckberg, and Kepler.
This analysis is a computation from author's performances over the past 11 months, between January and November 2010, based on monthly compilations of the top 10 bestselling lists (fiction) of The Bookseller, buchreport/Spiegel Bestsellerliste, El Cultural, Livres Hebdo/Ipsos, Svensk Bokhandel, and a combined top 20 fiction and non fiction list for Italy provided by Informazioni Editoriali, and of the Netherlands by GfK/CPNB De Bestseller. The chart was compiled by consultant Ruediger Wischenbart.