Editor's Note:

Starting this month, the Global Times will offer readers a monthly list of top books in different categories as suggestions for your book shelf. List data is provided by Openbook, a leading research institute that collects data within the publishing industry. The company established its national book retail market monitoring system in 1998 and currently covers over 2,000 bookstores in China.

With no signs that the fever for Nobel Laureate García Márquez, who had just passed away in April, will be fading away any time soon, the writer's works in the magical realism genre is still attracting Chinese readers like a magnet. Two of his most well-known books, including One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera, have secured their places among the top 10 best-selling fiction books in May.

Five of the 10 books on the list are actually foreign books. Besides the two from Márquez, The Kite Runner by Afghan-born American author Khaled Hosseini and House of Cards are familiar names among domestic readers, especially since the latter has accumulated a faithful audiences base via its eponymous TV series.

As for domestic fiction, various subjects have all earned popularity. I Belonged to You, a collection of short bedtime stories writer Zhang Jiajia first published online, became the most popular domestic book last month.

Two other best-selling domestic fiction books, The Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong and Prisoner Lu Yanshi by American Chinese writer Yan Geling, while not new have been made hot again by their film adaptations. The film Coming Home, based on Yan's novel and directed by Zhang Yimou, premiered in May amid much controversy. Meanwhile, various promotional activities in April and May for the film The Wolf Totem, directed by French director Jean-Jacques Annaud, drove readers and movie-goers to pick up the original novel before the film hits theaters in December.

The list of Top 10 fiction books in May

 

I Belonged to You by Zhang Jiajia

 

The Chinese edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude

 

The Chinese edition of The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini