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Stack of books in a bookstore in Leipzig
Photo: Jan Woitas / dpa
According to Media Control, 273 million books were sold in Germany in the 2021 calendar year. This number was spread across more than a million different titles - specifically 1,028,469. The most sold was therefore the novel "The Song of the Crayfish" by the American writer and zoologist Delia Owens: Media Control puts the number at almost 700,000. (You can find out more about the content of the novel - and its massive success in the USA too - here; you can read more about Owens himself here.)
The German author Juli Zeh lands in second place in the ranking with her Corona book »About People«.
The social novel about a city dweller in a Brandenburg village was still ahead of the sales figures in the first half of the year, as Media Control announced in July.
With »Über Menschen«, Zeh built on her immense success »Unterleuten« from 2016 (you can read more about this here).
In the top 10 of the books most sold in Germany last year, the entertainer Hape Kerkeling followed behind Owens and Zeh with his cat book »Pfoten vom Tisch«.
When asked if cats were man's best friends, Kerkeling recently told SPIEGEL: “That sounds too much like a dog to me.
Cats accompany people on their way and thus offer them the opportunity to broaden their horizons of feeling. "
Sebastian Fitzek landed fourth in the literature ranking with his psychological thriller »Playlist«, followed by David Safier with his former chancellor thriller »Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark«.
Behind them landed the Northern Irishwoman Lucinda Riley (»The Disappeared Sister«), who died in 2021, again bestselling author Fitzek (»The First Last Day«), Karsten Dusse (»Mindful Murder«) and Rita Falk (»Rehragout-Rendezvous«).
The comic book "Asterix and the Griffin" rounds off the top ten.
It is the 39th volume in the series, the author is Jean-Yves Ferri, and Didier Conrad is responsible for the drawings.
aar / dpa