Simenon

Numbering more than four hundred in all, including the beloved Inspector Maigret stories, Georges Simenon's novels have been translated into some fifty languages, with sales exceeding 500 million copies worldwide. Now, drawing on unprecedented access to Simenon's papers, family, and friends, Pierre Assouline gives us the utterly absorbing story of this tormented and egomaniacal genius of literary mass production. The narrative begins with a troubled youth in France during the 1920s: Simenon's early involvement with crime and prostitutes inspired the guilt that would haunt his adulthood and…