German best-seller makes author a millionaire

An anti-immigrant polemic written by a former central banker is among the Christmas best-sellers in Germany and its author has become a millionaire, according to media reports on Saturday.

About 1.25 million copies of Thilo Sarrazin’s Germany Does Itself In have been sold since its release in August, and sales show no sign of slowing, publisher DVA said.

“At the moment we are selling around 10,000 copies per day,” said DVA spokesman Markus Desaga in Focus weekly.

In the book, Mr Sarrazin says Germany was being made “more stupid” by poorly educated and unproductive Muslim immigrants and their numerous offspring, and accused the approximately four million Muslims of failing to immigrate.

“If I want to hear the muezzin’s call to prayer, then I’ll go to the Orient,” he says in the book, saying that allowing in millions of “guest workers” in the 1960s and 1970s was a “gigantic error”.

The book led to Mr Sarrazin’s resignation from the Bundesbank, where he was a member of the executive board, and triggered a fierce debate on Islam and immigration in the country, with Chancellor Angela Merkel admitting that multi-culturalism had failed.

Mr Sarrazin said he has become a millionaire thanks to the sales of the book, but would not reveal exactly how much he had earned.

“I negotiated a little over 12 per cent” of the sales rights, he said in an interview.