It’s a back-to-school hit! Exit Amélie Nothomb, Lilia Hassaine or Maria Pourchet, it’s good Panayotis Pascot, who, with his first autobiographical novel, created surprise and excitement in all bookstores in France. A month after its release, the novel Next time you bite the dustpublished by Stock Editions, sold more than 70,000 copies, and more than 170,000 have already been printed. A true publishing phenomenon, something unheard of for a first novel. As a bookstore confesses Parisianeach book by Panayotis Pascot sells like hot cakes: “There is enormous enthusiasm. The last time we saw that was with Dear Asshole by Virginie Despentes.
On average, a first novel sells between 500 and 800 copiesaccording to studies carried out by The Express and dated 2018. According to another study conducted by The Book Observatory in 2016, the average print run of a book in France is 5341 copies. The success of Panayotis Pascot is beyond comprehension: the columnist of Yann Barthès, revealed by The small newspaper on Canal+ and who then participated in the first season of Daily on TMC, enters the history of first French novelists. And it’s not over !
Panayotis Pascot can’t believe it
Additional surprising fact: the customers of Panayotis Pascot’s novel are mainly young people. As the same bookseller points out, the young comedian has succeeded in (re)inducing adolescents and young adults to reading: “For a first novel, such success is extremely rare. The customers are mainly young people, but we have more and more curious people who want to discover the book that everyone is talking about.” The editor who validated Panayotis Pascot’s novel spoke out and revealed that she had started working with the young man in 2020, when he presented her with the first forty pages: “I had goosebumps, certain passages overwhelmed me. I immediately had the feeling of being faced with the work of someone with a singular voice, with his own expression, his own look at the world”.
Asked by The ParisianPanayotis Pascot says he is as surprised as he is touched by the magnitude of the publication of his first novel, in which he speaks openly about his homosexuality and the long process of self-acceptance which plunged him into melancholy , antidepressants or even drugs: “It’s crazy. These aren’t things I calculated and I feel lucky. For four years I worked in my corner. I started writing to get to sleep, that was my evening routine. I saw literature as a territory to conquer and, suddenly, I find myself offered this territory for a visit. It’s very strange to be read, more than to write, ultimately.”