February 2, 2003

The predictable is happening and advance orders for the next Harry Potter book are piling up. The eagerly awaited fifth instalment of the Potter book titled Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix is releasing on June 21. Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com both said advance order were much ahead of Amazon’s largest pre-order ever for Harry Potter’s last, Goblet of fire. Amazon said it already had 30,000 orders for the book in the 24 hours after its publication. Author J.K. Rowling’s four published titles have sold an estimated 192 million copies worldwide and the books have been translated into at least 55 languages and distributed in more than 200 countries. Just like everything else that Rowling touches that turns into gold, the movies based on the first two books became hits.

Star authors lose their glitter

Bankable star authors such as Tom Clancy, Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark and Sue Grafton, have sold far fewer books than expected this past year. The dip in sales contributed to a dismal holiday season for book retailers and was probably the result of too many books by the same authors or a change in the tastes of readers.

Some bestselling authors have been spared the dip such as: Michael Crichton, James Patterson, Nora Roberts and Janet Evanovich who continued to thrive. The trend however could have a drastic effect on the huge advances paid out to star authors. These authors still dominate the bestseller list but change is round the corner said publishing executive Laurence J. Kirshbaum. “There is no longer a quintessential bestseller. The market is diluted to some extent by the incredible number of brand-name authors out at the same time.”

Retailers and publishing industry executives have been blaming publishers of doling out too much of the same thing, for instance Stephen King released two horror books in 2002, and Mary Higgins Clark, released three. Not surprisingly King’s second book, the novel From a Buick 8, fell short and sold 367,000 copies, about a 20 per cent decline and Clark’s Mount Vernon love story sold 108,000 copies, far fewer than the 427,000 copies of her last book in April.

In their defence, publishers of these writers’ contend that sales have dropped because of a weak retail economy that has hit booksellers especially hard.

Word of the year

The American Dialect Society selected “weapons of mass destruction” as the word of the year 2002. The word, which is actually a phrase, reflects America’s anxiety about war with Iraq. “The term goes back 50 years, but you can’t turn on the radio or television without hearing about ‘weapons of mass destruction’,” said Wayne Glowka, an English professor at Georgia College & State University who is the chairman of the society’s new words committee.

Not surprisingly many of the words reflected the threat of war with Iraq such as ‘Iraqnaphobia,’ and ‘regime change’. There was one nomination for 2002’s most inspirational word: ‘embetterment’, coined by President Bush. But it was voted down because ‘people didn’t want to encourage it’, Glowka said. Last year’s word of the year was, not surprisingly, ‘9-11’.

Young at heart Wesley, dead

Young at heart British novelist Mary Wesley died at the age of 90. A late bloomer, Wesley published her first novel while in her 70s. Her racy second world war romance The camomile lawn, won much critical acclaim when it was first released. Wesley once said her “chief claim to fame is arrested development — getting my first novel published at the age of seventy”.

She was a great believer in not giving up in life and said, “A lot of people stop short. They don’t actually die but they say, ‘Right I’m old, and I’m going to retire,’ and then they dwindle into nothing. They go off to Florida and become jolly boring...In my eighties, my best friends are in their fifties, and I have many friends at university. It keeps one young, and up with the vocabulary. That’s terribly important, especially for a writer.”

After her first novel, Jumping the queue, Wesley wrote prolifically right till the 1990s. Her other novels include A sensible life, Not that sort of girl, Second fiddle and The vacillations of Poppy Carew.

Matsui Yayori dead

Japanese feminist author and journalist Matsui Yayori died in Tokyo on December 27, 2002. She was 68. Matsui became one of the few women in Japan to reach a senior editorial position with the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. She was a founding member of the Asian Women’s Association; founder of the Asian Women’s Resource Centre and worked for the Women’s International War Crimes Tribunal held in Tokyo in December 2000. She wrote many books and articles on women’s and environmental issues, which include works such as Women in the New Asia: from pain to power. Yayori was also the member and facilitator of many activist networks in Asia.

Castro at book presentation

Gerardo Hernandez, one of five Cuban men serving sentences in the US on espionage charge has published a book of political cartoons. An unlikely guest turned up at the presentation of the book: President Fidel Castro. Castro showed up at the National Library for his first public appearance some two weeks after a serious infection in his leg.

The 76-year-old leader said that he had suffered an insect bite in his left leg that became seriously infected. It is the first time Castro had ever publicly mentioned an illness during nearly 44 years of rule.

Poem against attacking Iraq

Andrew Motion, Britain’s poet laureate is opposing an attack against Iraq, till, he says, UN inspectors find evidence of weapons of mass destruction. “Causa Belli”, his poem reads:

They read good books, and quote, but never learn/ a language other than the scream of rocket-burn./ Our straighter talk is drowned but ironclad:/ elections, money, empire, oil and Dad.

In an interview Motion said US President George W. Bush and other leaders were “actually driving the thing forward”. “In other words, it’s as much to do with oil, imperialism and a sort of strange father fixation,” he said, referring to Bush. Motion was appointed poet laureate in 1999 and is free to write about any subject he fancies. He has written about bullying, homelessness and former South African President Nelson Mandela.

Eastwood sues

A biographer penning Hollywood star Clint Eastwood’s biography has been hit by a $10 million lawsuit for falsely portraying him as a wife-beater and coward.

The lawsuit said that the book falsely claims Eastwood beat his first wife and that he used a romance with an officer’s daughter to avoid being posted overseas during the Korean War. Eastwood is also upset at being called an atheist in the book. The author McGilligan said: “The book is fair and honest to the best of my ability,” and the publishers, St Martin’s Press, are confident the book is accurate.

In addition to the $10 million, Eastwood is also asking for damages for harming his “reputation and standing in the community, mortification and embarrassment”.

Naipaul’s pearls of wisdom

Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul struck with his acerbic statements again, this time at a meeting for Non-Resident Indians, the Pravasi Bharatiya. He suggested that Indians stop living in the past and blaming the British for everything. The address came after the Hindi translation of his book Beyond belief, was released. Brief and pointed, Naipaul didn’t even spare the gathering saying that it had “an element of the trade fair”.

He didn’t even let Mahatma Gandhi off easily, saying that “he was a failure in South Africa and did nothing there for 20 years”, though he quickly added that from that failure rose the great independent movement. The author used the story of Ananda Kumaraswami to urge Indians to stop feeling victimized and ask “why we have failed historically”.

Kumaraswami spent a lifetime travelling all over India studying and collecting art from the Rajput courts. He offered 900 paintings to various Indian institutions that turned him away and Kumaraswami finally found place for his collection in Boston, USA. His word of advice: “We must stop blaming the British for everything.”

Competing couple

For the first time in history of Britain’s Whitbread Book of the Year Prize a husband and a wife have both been shortlisted. Claire Tomalin for her biography of Samuel Pepys, Samuel Pepys: the unequalled self, and her husband Michael Frayn for his novel Spies.

An interview with the couple revealed that when news came in from their publishers that they were still in the running for the prize each was stricken with worry about how the other was faring in the contest. They had both advanced to the finals.

Tomalin’s work, has been called “a superb biography by a writer at the height of her powers”, by a judge and is a thick meticulously researched volume. Tomalin’s earlier books have included acclaimed biographies of Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen.

By contrast Frayn’s novel is a slim volume written sparingly and full of atmosphere which has been praised by the Whitbread panel as “beautifully rendered”. Frayn is a prolific writer and his plays such as Noises of and Copenhagen have been critically acclaimed.

When the results were announced on January 28, the wife emerged the winner. Claire Tomalin’s Samuel Pepys: the unequalled self, was declared the Whitbread Book of the Year.

A calendar and a diary

What better way than to start the day with a poem? This year once again Alhamra Publishers have published their two poetry calendars, one in English and one in Urdu.

Carrying poems by a host of poets as diverse as Iqbal, Kishwar Naheed and Mustafa Zaidi the calendar offers 365 poems. The English calendar carries a poem-a-day by diverse writers such as poet Ted Hughes and author Michael Ondaatje.

UKS, a resource and publication centre on women and media in Islamabad, has also published as every year a diary. This time it is titled Women of Pakistan: a journey through politics. Interspersed between the diary pages are past editorials and excerpts from various publications that track the Pakistani woman’s journey into politics. Particularly compelling is the chronology at the back of the diary. This charts the women’s movement from 1876 with the publication of Chashmah-e-Khird in which the women of the ruling families of Bhopal are appreciated for successfully managing the affairs of the State to 2002, when the number of reserved seats for women in Pakistan’s National Assembly were increased and 55 women contested in the elections on general seats.

First-hand experience

Paul Michaud reports from Paris that Abderazak Besseghir, a Franco-Algerian baggage handler at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, is completing a book about the ‘difficulty of being a Muslim in France’. He is writing from first-hand experience, as the book will detail his wrongful arrest and two weeks’ detention after explosives were found in his car. A former French army officer finally confessed to the crime. While Editions Albin Michel, France’s best-known publishing house, gets set to release the book in April, a French anti-racist organization, SOS Racisme, said that it is suing the French government on the author’s behalf.

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