January 8, 2002

PAUL Michaud reports from Paris about the book, which became France’s surprise bestseller. Until early last year, few French publishers had heard of the most wanted man in the world, Osama Bin Laden, the subject of political writer Roland Jacquard’s book. Jean Picollec, a French publisher who specialises in books of limited interest, took on the project and the rest is a case of being at the right place at the right time.

Come September 11 and the first full scale biography on Osama Bin Laden, Au Nom d’Oussama Ben Laden... (In the name of Osama bin Laden) was running into reprints in only the first few weeks of its publications. The book wears a bright red banner stating ‘To understand September 11, 2001’ and is subtitled: The secret file on the world’s most sought after terrorist.

The work has been translated into a dozen languages and is being translated in many more. The 400-page volume contains revealing tidbits about Osama and even states in one place that the terrorist planned to attack Washington. This last piece of information Jaquard attributes to Western intelligence specialists who were aware of it but took it with a pinch of salt because of its audacity.

While In the name of Osama bin Laden flies off the shelf, the 37-year-old publication put out by France’s governmental publishing house is winding up. Publishers have told Maghreb-Machrek, the oldest French-language magazine focussing on the Arab world, that its print run of 2000 copies and 1000 regular subscribers make it an unfeasible project. Opponents of the decision have been logging on to the net and signing a petition in protest. They feel that the magazine has become a key intellectual platform that bridges the Arab and the non-Arab world. Indeed, the editors themselves consider the decision “...highly unfortunate. Our raison d’etre has always been to permit a debate of ideas among as many points of view as possible, and also to provide a better understanding of a part of the world that is usually — as we have become conscious again this winter — misperceived and misunderstood.”

 

ZAHIDA HINA WINS AWARD
Pakistani journalist and fiction writer Zahida Hina has won the SAARC Literary Award 2001. Instituted in 2000, the SAARC Writers Conference seeks to usher in an era of peace by becoming a meeting point for writers and intellectuals of the region. Eminent writers, poets and intelligentsia from SAARC countries gathered for the three-day conference in New Delhi to consolidate their voices.

Indian President K.R. Narayanan inaugurated the fourth SAARC writer’s conference. Ironically, the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament forced Narayanan to leave the conference without addressing the inaugural session. He did however give away the awards to the writers towards the close of the session. Others who won the award included Indian writers Laxman Gaikwad, Dr Ganesh Narayandas and Maithreyi Pushpa. In March this year, celebrated poet Shamsur Rahman was awarded the SAARC Lifetime Literary Achievement Award for his outstanding contribution to Bangla literature.

 

LITERARY CLASSIC SPARKS FAMILY FEUD
Close on the heels of the film adaptation of Harry Potter comes the film version of J.R.R. Tolkein’s literary masterpiece The lord of the rings: the fellowship of the ring.

Released on December 19, the film opened to rave reviews, which touted it as ‘a classic’. The fellowship of the ring is the first part of a trilogy. Published in 1954, the story is essentially a mythical tale about the fight between good and evil. The second and third part of the trilogy The two towers, and The return of the king, are due to open in 2002 and 2003, respectively.

Despite the rave reviews Tolkein’s grandson, Simon, was the only member of the family who attended the premiere. The majority of the Tolkeins have opposed film director Peter Jackson’s effort. Simon’s father Christopher has also excluded him from the board that runs his grandfather’s estate. Christopher Tolkien had said that ‘...The lord of the rings is peculiarly unsuitable to transformation into visual dramatic form. The suggestions that have been made that I disapprove of the films to the extent of thinking ill of those with whom I may differ, are wholly without foundation.”

Simon Tolkien, however, says that, “My father has refused to have anything to do with me for three years. It was my view that we should take a much more positive line on the film and that was overruled by my father.”

 

SADDAM’S NEW LITERARY OFFERING
Saddam Husain has reportedly published a second novel titled Al-Qala’ah al-Hasinah (‘The fortified castle’). The work is an allegory, which combines romance and Iraqi politics against the backdrop of the Gulf War. The book, which appeared in December, is being praised and heavily promoted by both the state-run television and press as an ‘innovation, which nobody has managed to achieve during the past century’. As with Saddam’s last novel, Zabibah wal malik (‘Zabibah and the king’), the cover of the novel does not identify the author, instead saying that it is a ‘novel by its author’.

Al-Qala’ah al-Hasinah a novel about the struggle of a militant who took part in the Iraq-Iran war and the Gulf War is selling at 4,000 Iraqi Dinars (1.25 pounds) and is 713 pages long. The novel also has a subplot about a servant who betrays his master and runs away. That is being seen as an allegory of Iraq’s claim to having been betrayed by Kuwait.

 

WRITING SPREE IN PRISON!
Utilizing his time in prison, disgraced British politician and best-selling author Jeffrey Archer has managed to write 300,000 words and one complete novel! The first novel that he has turned out from prison is titled In the lap of the gods. Life in prison has, in Lord Archer’s own words, opened his eyes “...I came in very naive about heroin, cocaine and crack, I am now becoming well informed.”

Archer is currently serving a four-year sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice. He is best known for populist bestsellers such as Cain and Abel and First among equals.

 

HARRY POTTER FORGES AHEAD
In an interview for the BBC, J.K. Rowling author of the popular Harry Potter novels, revealed that she has already written the last chapter of the final Harry Potter book. She also revealed that some of the boy wizard’s future adventures would make for distressing reading.

Rowling who is now a billionaire revealed that she has already decided the fate of all the major characters, and hinted that some could be killed off.

Rowling is also promising some romance in the final three books. ‘There’s more boy-girl stuff...They’re 15 now, so hormones are working overtime.’

So far, Harry has shown interest in his Quidditch teammate, Cho Chang, but Rowling hinted that it is his relationship with best friend Hermione Grainger that will really take off.

And just to add fuel to the tirade against the Harry Potter books 32-year old author, Michael Gerber, has written a Harry Potter parody, Barry Trotter and the unauthorised parody. Gerber follows the adventures of 22-year-old Barry Trotter at Hogwash School of Wizardry where the magician-in-training spends his time impressing female fans, listening to rap-metal and doing little work.

The book is a take on the enormous marketing campaign for the recent blockbuster film adaptation of “Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone”. Gerber regards the whole exercise as excessive control of the Harry Potter brand.

A fan of Harry Potter himself, 32-year-old Gerber, wanted to raise the concerns of parents about the extent to which their children are being targeted by big corporations. And so the novel sees Barry trying to stop a film version of his life being made by his mortal enemy, He-Who-Smells, the evil Lord Valumart and his legions of Marketors.

 

BRITISH ACADEMY AWARD
The first prize awarded by the British Academy was shared by a biography of Hitler and an account of the medieval English empire. The judges ruled Ian Kershaw’s second volume on the Nazi leader, Hitler: 1936-1945, Nemesis, and The first English empire: power and identities in the British Isles 1093-1343, by Rees Davies, as works of ‘impeccable scholarship which were accessible to the general public’.

Kershaw is a professor at Sheffield University, and has spent 10 years working on his two-volume biography. Professor Davies, who is at All Souls College, Oxford, and is chairperson of its history faculty, said he firmly believed history was an art. His book is based on a series of lectures and the task of the lecturer he said ‘was to keep people awake for the better part of an hour’. The dates in the title were, he confessed, intended to intrigue the reader.

 

ODDEST TITLE OF THE YEAR
The manual titled Butterworth’s Corporate Manslaughter Service won the 2001 Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of the Year. The Bookseller, a weekly trade magazine for Britain’s book industry, has run the contest since 1978, when Proceedings of the second international workshop on nude mice won the inaugural prize. This year’s prize won over such choice titles as The flat-footed flies of Europe, Fancy coffins to make yourself, and Tea bag folding.

The prize? A bottle of vintage champagne.

 

FIRST BOOK AWARD
Graphic novelist Chris Ware won the 2001 Guardian First Book Award for Jimmy Corrigan: the smartest kid on earth. Ware, who is a cartoonist, won a L10,000 prize for the visually stunning semiautobiographical tale about a boy coping with the absence of his father. This is the third year that the award has been given out by the British newspaper to acknowledge an outstanding debut in fiction or nonfiction. Upon receiving the award Ware said, ‘It has been deeply flattering all along even to have been grouped with such distinguished company. As a cartoonist, one isn’t used to being taken seriously.’

 

CHILD POET PUBLISHES POETRY
Eleven-year-old Mattie Stepanek has written two best-selling volumes of poetry and signed a deal for three more books. His next book, Hope through heartsongs, is due out in April. Stepanek who suffers from a rare form of muscular dystrophy became something of a celebrity when doctors told Stepanek he had just a few days to live. A small Virginia publisher agreed to grant him one last wish: to publish a collection of his poetry. VSP Books initially published 200 copies of Stepanek’s, Heartsongs, which he wrote between the ages of three and six. Since then Heartsongs and its sequel have sold a combined 480,000 copies.

Stepanek has since bounced back from his brush with death and has been named the National Goodwill Ambassador for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. His mother also suffers from the same disease, which has already claimed his older brother and two sisters.

 

LETTERS FAIL TO SELL
The letters of reclusive author J.D. Salinger written to his daughter over the course of thirty-five years failed to sell at a Sotheby’s auction. Sotheby’s had estimated that the letters would fetch up to $350,000, but bidding stopped at $170,000, which fell well below the minimum requirement for the transaction.

Salinger’s daughter Margaret who exposed details of her troubled relationship with her father in the best-selling Dream catcher: a memoir had made the letters available for sale. In 1999, the author’s former lover Joyce Maynard had also sold her collection of letters. JD Salinger is the author of the critically acclaimed Catcher in the rye.

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