The Malaysian Insider :: Books
The Malaysian Insider :: Books |
| Haruki Murakami novel Japan’s 2013 bestseller Posted: 02 Dec 2013 07:20 PM PST The novel, about a man struggling to come to terms with events in his past, beat off competition from the flood of self-help books and how-to manuals published in Japan every year to come top of the list released Monday by Nippon Shuppan Hanbai. Murakami's "Shikisai wo Motanai Tazaki Tsukuru to Kare no Junrei no Toshi (Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage)" was released in Japanese in April. The bestseller list covers the 12-month period to November 30. The distributor does not disclose the number of copies it sold but Bungei Shunju, the publisher of the Murakami book, says it has printed 1.05 million copies. Second place in the list went to a book by a cancer specialist cautioning against sufferers having surgery too early. Murakami, who has a large and loyal following worldwide, is regularly mentioned as a potential winner of the Nobel literature prize, but was passed over again this year in favour of Canadian Alice Munro. His works are sprinkled with pop culture references and characterised by lyrical prose that deals – sometimes surreally – with his characters' struggles on the margins of Japanese society. An English translation of his latest novel is expected sometime next year. – AFP, November 3, 2013 |
| US book publisher Andre Schiffrin dies at 78 Posted: 02 Dec 2013 04:52 PM PST French-born US publisher Andre Schiffrin, who introduced a raft of literary lions to American readers, has died in Paris at the age of 78, the New York publishing house he founded said yesterday. Schiffrin, who divided his time between New York and his native Paris, had been suffering from pancreatic cancer. "The New Press mourns the loss of its visionary founder... a brilliant editor, publisher, progressive thinker and mentor," the company said in a statement on its website. The New York Times called Schiffrin "one of America's most influential men of letters," not least for his opposition to the takeover of book publishing in the United States by big media conglomerates. For 28 years, Schiffrin ran Pantheon Books, a Random House imprint that published such writers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gunter Grass, R. D. Laing, Studs Terkel and Noam Chomsky. With Pantheon losing money, Random House – then part of the Newhouse media empire – fired Schiffrin, prompting an outcry among authors and leading Schiffrin to launch the New Press in 1992. Random House was sold in 1998 to the German media giant Bertelsmann, while Schiffrin wrote a critique of the book industry, titled "The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read." Schiffrin came to the United States as a youngster when his family fled France during World War II to escape the Nazi-led persecution of Jews. His father Jacques Schiffrin, who was born in Baku, then part of the Russian empire, had founded the well-known La Pleiade imprint in France. Schiffrin is survived by two daughters, one of whom is married to the American economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. – AFP, December 3, 2013. |
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