Under Harry’s spell

Paris

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix became the first book printed in English to reach the top of France’s best-seller list, with 41,000 copies sold in two weeks. Many customers at one Paris bookshop did not speak a word of English, but they snapped up the teenage wizard’s latest adventures anyway. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” said bookseller Ruth Baxter. A French translation is due in December, but the hype surrounding the English version’s release was too much for fans to resist, said Sophie Martin, a French pollster. “There was so much curiosity,” she said.

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