50 Shades of Grey Now in French

image source: telegraph.co.uk

Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?

Whether or not you’re a fan of the book, ’50 Shades of Grey’, it’s hard to argue that the popularity of the novel is contained to the just the garish readers in the states.

The translation of the novel into French, the most romantic language in the world (according to francophiles), has just solidified the ‘mommy-porn’ as a world-wide sensation.

Natasha Wynarczyk from Marie Claire reports:

Two days after its launch, the French translation called Cinquante Nuances de Grey was approaching the 100,000 sales mark, making it the fastest selling novel in France since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Given the terrible press in France, it was thought it wouldn’t be as popular as in the UK, where it has even outsold the Highway Code.

But the sales figures show that readers are ignoring the words of critics in order to read the raunchy novel, which tells the story of an S&M relationship between a 22-year-old graduate and a domineering billionaire.

Critics had said the book had ‘the writing level of a six-year-old’ and was a ‘spiced up Mills and Boon whose sex scenes were laughable’.

However reader comments on a forum, 20 Minutes, were less insulting.

One woman, who called herself Valérie, said the book was: ‘A drug that one cannot do without and which leaves one full of eroticism.’

Have you read ’50 Shades of Gray’?  What do you think?  Would the novel be more appealing in French?