Maigret, monthly

Penguin has announced it will be publishing one Georges Simenon novel per month for 75 months in £6.99 trade paperbacks (probably as quickly as he wrote them), beginning with Pietr the Latvian (Pietr-le-Letton, 1930) on 7th November.

There is an interesting article on the writing of Pietr the Latvian at the Maigret fan site. Apparently the publisher didn’t really like it and hedged his bets by printing it in installments in a magazine. Thus, although it was the first Inspector Maigret book to be written, it was not the first to be published.

Back to Penguin, the series editor Josephine Greywoode says:

We see [Simenon] as one of the great writers of the 20th century. Every single one of these books deserves a bit of attention and is very distinct from the others . . . if we were to put out 75 altogether, we would be forcing [booksellers] in many ways to make a selection, but hopefully if we’re seeding them over a longer period of time it allows the reader and the retailer to take it one step at a time, and to really savour each book for what it is.

For more, on this story, see the Bookseller website.