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YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 19, ARMENPRESS. “The Little Prince" by French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry tops this week's "Bestseller Books List" introduced by "Armenpress" News Agency. The novella is both the most read and most translated book in the French language, and was voted the best book of the 20th century in France. The book was translated into more than 190 languages.
“The Art of Dedication or Dithyramb to a Rose” written by Edgar Harutyunyan occupies the 2nd position in the list.
“TheAlchemist” novel, one of the best creations of Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho is the 3rd. The novel is on one’s having a dream and perseverance to make the dream come true coupled with love, kindness and ability to recognize a new country and a new culture.
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" occupies the 4th position of our list. This is the only published novel by Oscar Wilde, appearing as the lead story in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine on 20 June 1890, printed as the July 1890 issue of this magazine. The magazine's editors feared the story was indecent as submitted, so they censored roughly 500 words, without Wilde's knowledge, before publication. But even with that, the story was still greeted with outrage by British reviewers, some of whom suggested that Wilde should be prosecuted on moral grounds, leading Wilde to defend the novel aggressively in letters to the British press. Wilde later revised the story for book publication, making substantial alterations, deleting controversial passages, adding new chapters and including an aphoristic Preface which has since become famous in its own right. The amended version was published by Ward, Lock and Company in April 1891. Some scholars believe that Wilde would today have wanted us to read the version he originally submitted to Lippincott's.
American well-known writer Ray Bradbury’s “Martian Chronicles” ranks the 5th. It is considered as one of the best books of the 20th century. As Astronomer Carl Sagan once noticed, “Mars is a kind of mythical arena, where our earthly hopes and fears are incarnated.”
Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is in the 6th position in the list.
“The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green comes next on our list.
"The Great Gatsby" by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald appeared in the 8th position. The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.
1984" by George Orwell occupies the 9th position of the Bestseller Books List. While 1984 has come and gone, Orwell's narrative is more timely that ever. 1984 presents a "negative utopia", that is at once a startling and haunting vision of the world — so powerful that it's completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of entire generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions — a legacy that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.
Friedrich WilhelmNietzsche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” is the last work in our list. It was first published in Armenian, in 2002.
To complete the bestseller list, the following bookshops have participated in the survey: “New Book” (093-60-40-64), “Noah’s Ark” (56-81-84), Armenian Book” (54-07-06), “Edit Print” (57-70-09), “Bureaucrat” (50-01-52), “Bookinist” (53-74-13), “Art Bridge” (58-12-84) and “Zangak” (23-25-28).
Completed by Roza Grigoryan