Bibliofile

So much for Salman Rushdie's latest, timed like all the rest of his books since Midnight's Children, to be ready in time for the Booker race. The shortlist on September 9 bypassed Shalimar the Clown. But he is in good company: Ian McEwan's Saturday and J.M. Coetzee's The Slow Man also didn't make it to the finals. But Zadie Smith is up there with On Beauty and so is ol' favourite Julian Barnes with his historical on Sherlock Holmes, Arthur and George.

Penguin is having its annual sales conference this week—this time it's in Sri Lanka. The agenda is still hush-hush but there can be few surprises in store for a publishing house that already knows that the competition can't catch up, at least for the next few years. The entry of new players like Random House doesn't cause even a thin trickle of sweat for a publishing house that is only celebrating its 22nd birthday in India. The only risk perhaps is of a growing sense of complacency, but that's unlikely to come up at an in-house conference.