The Elegance of The Hedgehog - Reception

Reception

An acclaimed literary work, The Elegance of the Hedgehog has been considered by critics and press alike as a publishing phenomenon. Upon the novel's release, it had received significant support from booksellers. The novel has earned Barbery the 2007 French Booksellers Prize, the 2007 Brive-la-Gaillarde Reader's Prize, and the Prix du Rotary International in France. The Elegance of the Hedgehog has been adapted into the film Le hérisson (2009).

The novel was a best-seller and long-seller in France, amassing sales of 1.2 million copies in hardback alone. It stayed on the country's best-seller for 102 straight weeks from its publication, longer than American novelist Dan Brown's best-selling books. According to reviewer Viv Groskop, the philosophical element in the novel partly explains its appeal in France, where philosophy remains a compulsory subject. Anderson agreed, commenting that the novel became popular in France because it is "a story where people manage to transcend their class barriers". The novel also received a warm response in Korea, and sold over 400,000 copies in Italy. The release of the novel helped increase the sales of Barbery's first novel, Une Gourmandise.

A week after the novel was published in the United Kingdom, The Guardian ran an article about French best-sellers published in English, focusing on The Elegance of the Hedgehog. In it, writer Alison Flood contended that "fiction in translation is not an easy sell to Brits, and French fiction is perhaps the hardest sell of all". Promotions buyer Jonathan Ruppin predicted that the novel would struggle to gain a readership in the United Kingdom because, according to him, in the UK market "the plot is what people want more than anything else" and the novel's storyline is not its central aspect.