Direct effect of Donald Trump's return to the White House? The American news agency Associated Press (AP) noted, Friday, November 8, a jump in sales of dystopias, these fictions based on imaginary societies governed by a totalitarian power or a harmful ideology.
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In bookstores first. Shannon DeVito, director of Books at the Barnes & Noble chain, assured: “Fiction and nonfiction books that feature fascism, feminism, dystopian worlds, and right- and left-wing politics have skyrocketed in our sales with the election results. »
This enthusiasm has also been verified in online sales on Amazon. The Scarlet Handmaid (McClelland & Stewart, 1985), the great classic of the genre by Margaret Atwood, adapted into a television series by Bruce Miller, is the most glaring example. The story revolves around the repression of women within the framework of a formidable dictatorship. Sterility has struck them and their world is now divided between the Wives, who dominate the house, the Marthas, who maintain it, and the Handmaids, whose role is reproduction. After experiencing record sales throughout Mr. Trump's first term, this dystopia rose to prominence on the list of the most purchased books on Amazon, as soon as the results of the American presidential election were made public.
Breakthrough of pro-Trump books
AP specifies that other dark and futuristic stories, such as the visionary 1984 (Secker & Warburg, 1949), by George Orwell – in which human beings are monitored day and night –, or even Fahrenheit 451 (Ballantine Books, 1953), by Ray Bradbury – which describes a world in which books are banned and must all be burned – were also included in Amazon's 40 bestsellers list on Thursday, November 7 afternoon. Another bestseller from Trump's previous term, Tyranny. Twenty lessons from the 20the century (Gallimard, 2017), by Timothy Snyder, arrived in the top 10 bestsellers.
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Unsurprisingly, pro-Trump books sold like hot cakes. Published in early October, the memoirs of the Republican's wife, Melania Trump, Melania (Skyhorse Publishing, 256 pages, 37 euros), made a dramatic breakthrough to take the lead in sales on the Amazon list, Thursday, November 7, while Hillbilly Elegy (Globe, 2017), signed by the vice-president-elect, J. D. Vance, climbed into the top 10. This work, which deals in particular with the socio-economic problems of his hometown, Middletown (Ohio), had already established itself as a publishing success when it was released in 2016. The Mr. Trump Photo Book Save America was in the top 30.
