EU-DIGEST - special edition

Charlotte Roche's exploration of filth in all its meanings now tops Germany's literary charts. Soon it will hit the shelves in her country of birth. Wetlands, which has beaten Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns and Ken Follett's latest to the top of Amazon's international sales list, has sparked a frenzy among major British publishers. Roche's German publishers last week refused to speak to The Observer or to arrange an interview with Roche to avoid pre-empting what is expected to be a massive UK deal and publicity campaign. 'No, nothing, impossible,' they said.

For whether it is the fantasies about sex, the polemics against the use of deodorants, the avocado cores grown specially for use in masturbation, or the detailed and inventive passages of scatological or genital description, Wetlands has left few indifferent.

French magazines have run articles on 'taboos and literature', Swiss papers have worried about moral corruption and, after seven weeks at the top of the bestseller list in Germany, no one is tiring of the debate. Der Spiegel summed up the message of the book as 'I stink therefore I am' - a reference both to the heroine's distaste for personal hygiene and her sexual fantasies about bodily odors.

For the complete report from the Guardian click on this link