With the news that Germany's biggest-selling non-fiction title in 2010 was Thilo Sarrazin's bigoted diatribe against Muslim immigrants, people obviously started wondering whether any other nations would like to read it. And the Financial Times Deutschland ran a piece that I've only just come across, Does Germany Abolish Itself? In it, we get the gratifying information that the German publishers DVA are a bit sheepish about it all. Top boss Thomas Rathnow apparently told Der Spiegel he's not proud of the book's success. And foreign rights head Gesche Wendenbourg mentions enquiries from dodgy organisations and individuals that "hadn't read the book but wanted to put translated extracts on the websites." They said no.
My favourite part of the item: there's been no interest in buying translation rights from the English-speaking world. After all, we already have The Bell Curve. Lucky us.
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