Year Of Rushdie?
Looks like this is going to be a year of anniversaries for Salman Rushdie. Not only has he made it to the Booker of Bookers shortlist for Midnight’s Children (the winner will be voted by readers, for a change) but there’s another anniversary which he’d rather forget. His Satanic Verses will be 20 this year. BBC London has commissioned a documentary for the occasion, and the filmmaker was in India last week to interview the man thought to have launched the storm: Khushwant Singh. Incidentally, among the old friends of Rushdie who are shying from talking in front of the camera is the otherwise intrepid feminist Germaine Greer.
Winning Looks
Why did Amitav Ghosh opt for the second-best bid and sell his magnum opus to Penguin instead of its rivals? Now we have it from the horse’s mouth: it was Penguin’s slick presentation—made by their team of editors and publicists on how the book would be packaged and sold. Ghosh’s agent, Barney Karpfinger (don’t get fooled by the funny name, he’s considered one of the world’s best), had never seen anything like it anywhere in the world. Now it remains to be seen how they’ll repackage India’s hitherto most reclusive writer when he arrives for his launch mid-June.
Jeff’s Chastity Ring
Black Cats for writers? You’d better believe it. Landmark hired a pair of stocky young musclemen in goggles and black suits to stand on either side of Jeffrey Archer during his six-city tour. No, it wasn’t terrorists they were afraid of but women fans who they feared would break the cordon to touch their hero!
