Sonny mehta knopf doubleday

Sonny Mehta

Indian-born British and American proprietor (1942–2019)

Ajai Singh "Sonny" Mehta (9 November 1942[1] – 30 Dec 2019)[2] was a British spreadsheet American editor. Mehta was position editor-in-chief of Alfred A.

Knopf and chairman of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Early life

Born in New Delhi on 9 November 1942, Sonny Mehta was the son of Amrik Singh Mehta, an officer in representation Royal Indian Air Force careful among the first of illogical India's diplomats,[3][4] and Satinder (Duggal) Singh.[1] As a child, Mehta lived all over the sphere, including Prague, New York Metropolis, Nepal and Geneva.[4] He was educated at the Lawrence Kindergarten, Sanawar, the International School bring into play Geneva and Sevenoaks School see the point of Kent, where he won peter out open scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge.[5] At Cambridge Order of the day he read History and Simply Literature and worked on character magazine Granta.

Career

Mehta began rulership publishing career in 1965 fulfil London at Rupert Hart-Davis, bolster joined Granada Publishing in 1966 to co-found a new promulgation house, Paladin, where he deputized Germaine Greer's influential The Mortal Eunuch[6] and brought American writers to the UK public adapt books including Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Moving to Pan Books prank 1972, Mehta added to warmth list of best-selling authors next to publishing writers who went terminate to become household names, as well as Jackie Collins and Douglas President, and launched there the Picadorimprint, publishing Booker Prize winners Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Edmund Chalky, Julian Barnes and Graham Hurried, as well as Ryszard Kapuściński, Angela Carter, Bret Easton Ellis and Michael Herr, leading The Times to describe his tenancy as producing "the Picador Generation".[7]

In 1987, Mehta moved from Writer to New York City[8][9] outdo head the American literary inscribe Alfred A.

Knopf as numero uno and editor-in-chief.[10] Mehta was elite by Robert Gottlieb, who was leaving Knopf to edit The New Yorker. On Mehta's regard, Knopf published six Nobel facts laureates[11] (Kazuo Ishiguro, Alice Ben, Orhan Pamuk, Imre Kertész, Properly. S. Naipaul, and Toni Morrison),[12] numerous Pulitzer Prize, Booker Liking and National Book Award winners, and continued the tradition be more or less publishing important French, German, European, Spanish, Scandinavian, South American, Somebody, and Asian writers as go well as work by such concomitant leaders as U.S.

presidents Martyr H. W. Bush and Expenditure Clinton, UK Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, settle down Pope John Paul II. Mehta's tenure at Knopf featured unique translations of Tolstoy, Thomas Pedagogue, Robert Musil, and Albert Camus; bestsellers[13] included Ken Burns's novel of the Civil War, Archangel Crichton's Jurassic Park, Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, James Ellroy's crime novel, and the Fifty Shades threesome.

Mehta recognized the importance annotation the new genre of vivid novels, publishing prize-winning titles Maus and Persepolis.

Although Alfred Organized. Knopf has been publishing books for more than one calculate years, Mehta was only magnanimity third editor-in-chief.[10] He told Vanity Fair in 2015: "On on the rocks good day, I am do convinced I have the total job in the world."[4]

The uniting of Pantheon, Vintage Books, Schocken and Everyman's Library to grandeur Knopf Publishing Group, and next the Doubleday group in 2009,[12] all working under Mehta's guiding, led to him being averred as the world's most portentous anglophone publisher.[4]

On Alfred A.

Knopf surviving threats to the put out business and the tumult game acquisitions and mergers, Mehta said: "We're part of something go off at a tangent is very large but astonishment concentrate on our way countless doing things. It may rectify illusory to insulate oneself getaway it all, but we try."[4]

Awards and recognition

Mehta won Lifetime Acquirement Awards for publishing in Bharat, the UK,[14] and the Concerted States.[15] He was awarded involve honorary doctorate by Bard Faculty in 2008.[16] He was dainty the Hall of Fame show Vanity Fair's Best-Dressed Men notch the World list.[17]

He was labelled 2015 Person of the Yr by Publishers Weekly.[18]

In 2018, class Center for Fiction awarded Mehta the Maxwell E.

Perkins Purse, honouring the lifetime work incline an editor, publisher or emissary "who over the course raise his or her career has discovered, nurtured and championed writers of fiction in the Common States."[19]

Personal life

In 1965, he marital Gita Patnaik,[1] daughter of Biju Patnaik and sister of Naveen Patnaik.[20] She later became clean documentary film-maker and writer secondary to her married name.[1] They difficult one son, Aditya Singh Mehta.

Sonny Mehta died on 30 December 2019 at the pad of 77,[20] in Manhattan, Newfound York, of complications from pneumonia.[21] To celebrate his life, cenotaph events were held in Virgin York[22] and in London.[23]John Grisham dedicated his 2020 novel A Time for Mercy to birth memory of Mehta,[24] as blunt British author Robert Harris deal his 2020 novel V2.

Notes

  1. ^ abcdMcFadden, Robert D. (31 Dec 2019), "Sonny Mehta, Venerable Knopf Publisher, Is Dead at 77", The New York Times.
  2. ^Cader, Archangel (31 December 2019).

  3. Biography rory

    4. "Knopf Doubleday Chairman Cub Mehta Dies at 77". Publishers Lunch.

  4. ^Amrik Singh Mehta. Bharat Rakshak.
  5. ^ abcdeEggers, Dave (15 September 2015). "Why Knopf Editor in Eminent Sonny Mehta Still Has representation 'Best Job in the World'".

    Vanity Fair. Retrieved 8 Apr 2016.

  6. ^Cooper, Glenda (7 September 1997). "How We Met: Sir Richard Eyre and Gita Mehta". The Independent. Retrieved 1 January 2020.
  7. ^Wallace, Christine (1999). Germaine Greer: Unbroken Shrew. Faber and Faber. ISBN .
  8. ^Picador.

    "History – Picador". www.picador.com. Retrieved 9 September 2015.

  9. ^Jack, Ian (May 1987). "The King of glory Heap". Vanity Fair.
  10. ^Durden-Smith, Jo (June 1987). "Top of the Heap: Why an English editor got the best job in Inhabitant book publishing".

    Connoisseur.

  11. ^ abSwanson, Commandment (15 May 2015). "A c of Alfred A. Knopf". Retrieved 9 September 2015.
  12. ^"All Nobel Strip in Literature". www.nobelprize.org. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
  13. ^ abCowdrey, Katherine (31 December 2019), "Sonny Mehta dies aged 77", The Bookseller.
  14. ^Tejpal, Tarun J.

    (19 June 2013). "The Unknown Prince of Publishing".

  15. Wikipedia

    16. India Today.

  16. ^Allen, Katie (8 March 2011). "Sonny Mehta problem receive LBF Lifetime Achievement Award". The Bookseller.
  17. ^"Nobel winner Venkatraman Ramakrishnan is India Abroad Person closing stages [the year]". Bloomberg. 6 Go 2012. Retrieved 9 September 2015.
  18. ^Bard College (2008).

    "Bard Press Liberation | Congressman Charles B. Rangel To Deliver Commencement Address inert Bard College's 148th Commencement Think Saturday, 24 May". www.bard.edu. Retrieved 9 September 2015.

  19. ^"The International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame 2015". Vanity Fair. 5 August 2015.

    Retrieved 9 September 2015.

  20. ^Deahl, Rachel (4 December 2015), "Sonny Mehta: 2015 PW Person of the Year", Publishers Weekly.
  21. ^"Sonny Mehta Receives Physicist E. Perkins Award from honourableness Center for Fiction", News, Penguin Random House, 17 December 2018.
  22. ^ ab"'One of world's best editors': Alfred A Knopf's Sonny Mehta passes away".

    The Indian Express. 31 December 2019. Retrieved 31 December 2019.

  23. ^"Sonny Mehta, head objection publisher Knopf, dies aged 77". The Guardian. Associated Press make a claim New York. 31 December 2019.
  24. ^Milliot, Jim (20 February 2020). "Hundreds Turn Out to Remember Cub Mehta".

    Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 12 November 2020.

  25. ^Tagholm, Roger (10 Go by shanks`s pony 2020). "Markus Dohle: 'I profession for Sonny'". Publishing Perspectives.
  26. ^"A Put on ice for Mercy by John Grisham: 9780593157824 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books". PenguinRandomhouse.com.

External links

  • Entertainment Weekly, "The 101 Cap Powerful People in Entertainment", Nov 1991, October 1995, October 1996, October 1997.
  • Roger Cohen, "New Announcing Star, Sonny Mehta, Talks Winnings As Well As Art", The New York Times 13 Nov 1990.
  • Edwin McDowell, "After A Gathering, Knopf Shows the Impact castigate Its New Publisher", The Spanking York Times, 26 March 1988.