Bibliofile

Why Wily Wylie

They are the power couple in today’s literary world and it was perhaps only a matter of time before they shared the same agent. The question was who was going to shift loyalties: would Nobel prize-winning Orhan Pamuk give up his agent, Andrew Wylie, and switch to Booker prize-winning girlfriend Kiran Desai’s long-time agent, David Godwin or the other way around? Wylie won, and how! He got the unassuming Kiran one of the world’s highest advances ($2.5 million) for a four-page proposal for her next novel, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, to be published in 2012.

A Bird Of Prey

But for Penguin India, it was win-win. They not only acquired Kiran Desai’s next, but also Pamuk’s next three works, including his new novel, A Strangeness in My Mind. Penguin, of course, won’t tell what it cost them to acquire the world’s most costly pair of writers, but it was a pre-emptive bid, which means the publishing house offers a sum large enough not to tempt Wylie into putting them up for auction in India.

Games Barrage

Funny, how quickly we got accustomed to the book launch parties, although they are a fairly recent invention. But for the first time in the last two decades, it’s been all quiet on the book launch front. The reason: the Commonwealth Games. What that has to do with book parties is anyone’s guess but that’s what publishers are telling their expectant authors.