Harry Potter and the Cursed Child topped Amazon’s list of 2016’s top-selling new releases, and The Girl on the Train was was NYPL’s most popular checkout of the year. Which fiction titles topped the charts around the world last year? We looked at bestseller lists for 2016 from nine other countries and in most cases found these two international blockbusters alongside popular local authors. 

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, is currently available to borrow from NYPL in English, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, French, Polish, Italian, and Hebrew, and as an e-book in German. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is available at the Library in English and Spanish. Books by international bestselling author Jojo Moyes, who also appears frequently on these lists, are currently available to borrow in Russian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Polish, and Italian, as  well as in English.

Canada 

The top five fiction titles of 2016 as reported in The Toronto Star:

The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapeña
The Widow by Fiona Barton
 I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh. This title is also available in Chinese and Korean.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was the top title in Children’s and Young Adult.

 

Mexico

Of the the top ten bestselling titles at Amazon Mexico, reported in El economista, four were fiction.

Harry Potter y el legado maldito  / Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Después de ti / After You by Jojo Moyes
Cinco esquinas [Five corners] by Mario Vargas Llosa (not yet translated into English). The Library has other books by Vargas Llosa to borrow in Spanish, English, Russian, and one or two in other languages.
Historia de un canalla / Story of a Sociopath by Julia Navarro

 

France

According to data collected by Edistat, eight of the top ten bestselling books in France in 2016 were fiction titles, including:

Harry Potter et l’enfant maudit / Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Two novels by Guillaume Musso: L’instant présent; La fille de Brooklyn. Few of his Musso’s page-turners have been translated into English. The Library has various titles to borrow in the original French, Russian, Korean, Polish, Italian, Arabic, and Spanish.
L’amie prodigieuse / My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. Also available in the original Italian, Spanish, and Polish.  

La fille du train / The Girl on the Train was number nine.

 

Ireland

The Irish Times reported on Ireland’s bestselling titles of 2016 and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was at the top of the list. The Girl on the Train was noted a big seller, but the list included  2016 releases only. Some other adult fiction titles on the list:
Holding by Graham Norton was Ireland’s most popular novel of 2016. This debut novel by the BBC talk show host has not been published  yet in the U.S.)
Game of Throw-Ins by Ross O’Carroll-Kelly (as told to Paul Howard), the latest in a series of satirical novels featuring a wealthy rugby player.
The Green Road by Anne Enright. Enright’s Man Booker Prize winning novel The Gathering is also available in Spanish.

 

Italy

Of the ten bestselling books of 2016 reported in Il libraio, the top six are:

Harry Potter e la maledizione dell’erede / Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
L’altro capo del filo [The Other End of the Line] / by Andrea Camilleri, the 24th title in the Montalbano series, not yet translated into English. Many other novels by Camilleri in the original Italian or translations in English or Spanish
La ragazza del treno / The Girl on the Train
Io prima di te / Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

La paranza dei bambini [The child hit squad] by Gomorrah author Roberto Saviano
L’amica geniale / My Brilliant Friend

 

Spain

The bestselling fiction titles at Amazon in Spain as reported by Universia España:

Harry Potter y el legado maldito / Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
El Laberinto de los espíritus [The labyrinth of the spirits] by Carlos Ruiz Zafón, author of the international bestseller The Shadow of the Wind / La sombra del viento.
Falcó, the latest historical thriller by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. 
Yo antes de ti / Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
Los herederos de la tierra [Heirs of the Earth] by Ildefonso Falcones
La chica del tren / The Girl on the Train was number ten.

 

Sweden

The top five fiction bestseller in Sweden in 2016, reported by Svenk Bokhandel:

Kaninjägaren [Rabbit hunter] by Lars Kepler (#6 in the Joona Linna mystery series)
Min fantastiska väninna / My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Kan man dö två gånger? [Can you die twice?] by Leif G. W. Persson (#4 in the Evert Bäckström series)
Det som inte dödar oss / The Girl in the Spider’s Web, David Lagerkrantz’s continuation of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series. Also available from the Library in Spanish, Polish, and Hebrew.

 

India

The bestselling fiction books for 2016 at the online retailer Flipkart as reported at India.com included various romances by Indian authors and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child but not The Girl on the Train.

One Indian Girl by Chetan Bhagat
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child 
Everyone Has a Story by Savi Sharma
Our Impossible Love by Durjoy Dutta
Cometh the Hour by Jeffrey Archer was number nine.

 

Australia

The New Daily reported in Australia’s bestselling adult fiction titles of 2016 in mid-October based on data from Dymocks booksellers, “putting aside” Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This title is also available at NYPL in Spanish, Russian, Hebrew,  Korean, and Polish.
Truly Madly Guilty by Liane Moriarty. Several of Moriarty’s previous novels are available in Spanish, Russian, and Korean.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

 

South Africa

For South Africa I couldn't find a list of the year's bestselling titles, but here are the top five bestselling fiction authors from 2014-2016 as listed in Bookmark Magazine, published by the SA Booksellers Association.

Deon Meyer. Most recent novel: Icarus (2015). Translated from Afrikaans. NYPL has some titles in Russian as well as English.
Wilbur Smith. NYPL also has some titles in Italian, Hungarian, Russian, and Polish..
James Patterson. NYPL has books in more than 30 languages, including Chinese, French, German, Italian, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish.
E.L. James. NYPL has the “Grey” novels in many languages, including Spanish, Chinese, French, Italian, Russian, Japanese, and Hebrew.
Nora Roberts. The Library has a selection of the author’s books in Russian, Spanish, Polish, Hebrew, French, and a few titles in other languages.

Do you check the bestseller lists from any other countries? What have you discovered? Do you have any international authors to recommend? Let us know in the comments section below.