Hilary Mantel’s contribution to LRB to come out as book

(New Delhi, Jun 13, 2020) A compilation of two-time Man Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel’s essays, book reviews, and memoir from over 30 years of her contribution to the London Review of Books will be published in October.

Mantel Pieces will be brought out by HarperCollins imprint 4th Estate and London Review of Books.

“Hilary Mantel’s subjects range far and wide: Robespierre and Danton, the Hite report, Saudi Arabia where she lived for four years in the 1980s, the Bulger case, John Osborne, the Virgin Mary as well as the pop icon Madonna, and a brilliant examination of Helen Duncan, Britain’s last witch,” a HarperCollins statement said.

“There are essays about Jane Boleyn, Charles Brandon, Christopher Marlowe and Margaret Pole, which display the astonishing insight into the Tudor mind we are familiar with from the bestselling Wolf Hall Trilogy,” it added.

Interleaved with letters and other ephemera gathered from the archive, Mantel Pieces will have 20 reviews, essays and pieces of memoir spanning over three decades.

Mantel’s famous lecture, Royal Bodies explores the place of royal women in society and our imagination. Here too are some of Mantel’s LRB diaries, including her first meeting with her stepfather and a confrontation with a circus strongman, the statement said.

“No writer does more for an issue of the LRB than Hilary Mantel. The evidence is here,” says Mary-Kay Wilmers, editor of the London Review of Books.

“We’re delighted to be working with Hilary and 4th Estate on introducing it to new audiences, and we hope that this is just that latest milestone in an ongoing story, with many more Mantel pieces still to come,” says Sam Kinchin-Smith, the London Review of Books’ head of special projects.

‘… Her diaries and pieces were a trail of breadcrumbs to her novels… The millions of readers who have delighted in the peerless writing of The Wolf Hall Trilogy will find similar rewards here,” adds Nicholas Pearson, publishing director at 4th Estate.

This is Mantel’s second book to be published this year. The conclusion to The Wolf Hall Trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, was published in March to huge critical acclaim. The first two books of the trilogy – Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies – fetched Mantel the Booker awards.

HarperCollins, Algebra launch online conversations with authors

(New Delhi, Apr 4, 2020) Amid the lockdown due to the coronavirus outbreak, HarperCollins in collaboration with an arts and ideas club will host live conversations every week with speakers from the publishing house’s long list of authors across fields.

Named #Reset, these interactions will take place every Wednesday morning when a speaker or a panel of speakers will take the virtual stage on Zoom to address concerns which are both contemporary and timeless, to talk about myriad disciplines and to develop more informed ways of perceiving.

The first conversation in this collaboration of HarperCollins and Algebra: The Arts & Ideas Club will be on April 8 between journalists Rajdeep Sardesai and Karan Thapar on the topic ‘The Politics of Pandemic’.

Akriti Tyagi, marketing head at HarperCollins India, says that as the coronavirus pandemic continues to disrupt lives, the publishing is working to ensure a seamless transition experience for readers of all ages.

Speaking about this venture, she says, “As part of the #Reset Campaign, we are offering a wide variety of interactions on our digital portals to keep our audience members engaged. Algebra was the obvious choice to partner this with and make the conversation more meaningful.”

HarperCollins to acquire Egmont Books

(London, Apr 1, 2020) HarperCollins Publishers on Wednesday announced that it will acquire Egmont Books UK Ltd., as well as the Nordic media group’s book business in Poland and Germany.

The deal, terms of which were not disclosed, is set to complete on April 30, a statement said, adding Egmont’s magazine publishing is not part of the transaction and is retained by c.

Egmont Publishing is owned by Egmont and focuses on award-winning content and platforms within film, television, streaming and cinema over gaming, e-commerce and marketing services to educational platforms, magazines and books.

Egmont Publishing is behind a wide range of popular magazine titles and books in more than 20 countries, and global licensing partnerships with a range of brand owners including Disney, Mattel, Hasbro, Mojang and Roblox.

On completion, Egmont Books UK will be run as a distinct children’s division led by the managing director of Egmont UK, Cally Poplak.

Poplak will join HarperCollins UK Executive Committee, and will report to Charlie Redmayne, CEO, HarperCollins UK, the statement said.

The division will maintain its publishing autonomy and will remain in its offices for the immediate future.

In Germany, Schneiderbuch will integrate into the children’s books group reporting to Carina Mathern, Editorial Director of HarperCollins Germany Children’s books who reports to Juergen Welte, MD HarperCollins Germany, and Egmont Books Poland will report through Agnieszka Baranska, MD, HarperCollins Poland, the statement said.

Chantal Restivo-Alessi, CEO International Foreign Language and CDO, HarperCollins Publishers said, “Egmont’s expertise in the children’s book market and position as a global player in licensed publishing, combined with HarperCollins global footprint will be the cornerstone for building and growing our worldwide strength in children’s publishing.”

According to Charlie Redmayne, CEO HarperCollins UK, “The acquisition of Egmont will enable us to unlock the potential of licensed publishing across the broadest international reach.”

Egmont Publishing CEO Torsten Bjerre Rasmussen said it was  a strategic decision to exit the children’s book business in UK, Poland and Schneiderbuch in Germany.

The art of queue jumping and Indians!

(New Delhi, Aug 28, 2016) What’s in a queue, most Indians ask as they invent innovative ways of queue-jumping, says a new book on the most striking characteristic that literally binds the diverse nation.

“People of every caste, creed, language, state, religion, province and street differ on virtually every other issue, but we all converge on this one ethos: the ethos of queue-jumping,” says V Raghunathan in his book The Good Indian’s Guide To Queue Jumping, published by HarperCollins.

According to him, Westerners and Indians are as different as chalk and cheese when it comes to queuing with Western queues mostly a “lifeless, boring and linear assortment of people standing somberly as if struck by life’s most extreme tragedy”.

But not so with Indians.

“Our average queues are full of verve and vitality, each brain in overdrive, actively evaluating all strategies to jump the queue,” he writes.

“What is more, in our queues we stand really tight, unlike the Westerners, who stand apart as if the next person may be suffering from some unmentionable contagion. That is why our queues, when they exist at all, are a solid, albeit uneven, line of people with all senses on alert, rather than the relaxed and limp lines seen in the West,” he goes on to add.

“In a nation of a billion people, there is no escaping queues. We find ourselves in one every day – whether to board the flight or if we are less fortunate to fetch water from a municipal tap. We no longer wait for years for a Fiat car or a rotary-dial phone but there are still queues that may last days, like those for school admissions. And then, there are the virtual ones at call centres in which there’s no knowing when we will make contact with a human,” the book says.

Raghunathan says that no wonder the disregard for queues has also found its way into the very folklore of the nation via Bollywood when “Amitabh Bachchan growled in his bass voice in Kaalia (1981), Hum jahan khade ho jaate hain, line wahin se shuru hoti hai, saying in effect – I will always jump to the head of the queue: stop me if you dare”.

The objective of his book, he says, is to enhance the wisdom evolved by Indians about queue-jumping.

He also touches on another important aspect related to queues – professional queuers.

“The basic idea of paying someone to stand as your proxy in a queue is neither terribly original nor new. Many of us have, at one time or the other, paid someone to line up on our behalf at a railway reservation counter or at the American embassy.

“But these efforts can at best be described as jugaad – an ad hoc way to address the queuing problem. They never evolved into a full-time entrepreneurial venture, leave alone a full-fledged corporate business, even if not listed on the stock exchange – as is the case in some places,” the book says.

Raghunathan terms queue-jumping in India as a troubling social phenomenon, made alarmingly ugly by the total refusal of service providers, regulators and society alike to apply their minds.

“It is never on our list of foremost concerns to address. But queue-jumping is only a symptom of our larger social apathy, corrupted mindset, the wide gap between the powerful and the common folk, our innate indifference to fairness ad concern for others, and the complete denial that we have a problem in the first place.

“It is a problem symptomatic of deeper ones so that it appears queue-jumping is going to be around for a very long time,” he says.

He feels a weak regulatory system encourages queue-jumping in all formats, which in turn makes the enforcement of measures to curb queue-jumping increasingly more difficult.

“This clearly implies that first and foremost we need to recognise that queue-jumping, especially in a country where queues are an important social reality, is a problem worthy of being tackled,” Raghunathan writes.

Now, Ramayana retold in graphic format

(New Delhi, Jun 25, 2014) The allegorical and engaging story-line of the Ramayana has inspired many versions and now a black-and-white graphic novel attempts a retelling of the epic from Hanuman’s point of view.

“Simian” by Vikram Balagopal is a gritty reimagining of the Ramayana that brings to life the scars -physical, moral and spiritual – borne by Hanuman, as he replays history, exploring the decisions one has to make in life and war.

The story is contained within the often glossed-over episode in the Mahabharata where Hanuman and Bhima meet. When Bhima chances upon an ailing monkey blocking his path in the forest, little does he realise that he is meeting his brother Hanuman. As the brothers settle in for a night of exchanging stories and notes, Hanuman tells a surprising tale: of the great war between Ram and Ravan.

“When I made the decision to create Simian, I dived into researching as many versions of these epics as possible and discovered a side to the Ramayana I hadn’t known – that it evolved with every version to reflect the sensibilities of the period and the people who produced it,” says Balagopal about the book.

The illustrator-cartoonist’s source and guide for the Ramayana was a translation of the epic by Ralph T H Griffith, and for any references to the Mahabharata, he used the translation by Kisari Mohan Ganguli.

The book, published by HarperCollins Publishers, is only the first two parts, in a trilogy, of the entire story and confines itself to the events surrounding the search for Sita.

The author says the characters’ motivations, relationships or even substantial portions of the “main” plot changed from telling to telling.

“In a Jain version, all the characters are depicted as Jains and in the end it is not Ram but Laxman who kills Ravan. A Buddhist versions called the Dasarata Jataka depicts Ram and Sita as siblings who marry, and though Ram, Laxman and Sita are exiled, the abduction of Sita did not finds a place in this version,” he says.

Balagopal, who has trained at the New York Film Academy, made some changes of his own for his version ranging from tweaking minor characters and plot details to the addition of new scenes. He chose to depict Jambavan as part of the vanar clan and not as the king of bears, a not- very-uncommon practice; and having Hanuman leap up to grab the moon instead of the sun.

“I have tried to stay true to the story in Griffith’s verse translation, occasionally going so far as to retain a turn of phrase or a line that did not seem capable of improvement,” he says.

Balagopal also made the choice to represent the different ages, centuries apart, of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in the character names and have split the usage between the two tales to the shorter Ram, Laxman, Ravan in the Ramayana and the longer Arjuna, Duryodana, Bhima in the Mahabharata for the sake of the storytelling, and not as a whim.

“It isn’t my place to offer definitive answers about the Ramayana, a text sacred to hundreds of millions of people. What you have here is a young man, of this time and place, trying to understand these characters the best he can, and tell the story pumping through his heart and veins, nothing more,” he says of his effort.

Resolution of Kashmir issue will make Pak a normal state: CIA veteran Bruce Riedel

(New Delhi, Jul 4, 2013) Resolution of the Kashmir issue would go a long way towards making Pakistan a more normal state and reducing its preoccupation with India, says CIA veteran Bruce Riedel.

He also suggests a quiet American effort led by President Barack Obama to move the two countries towards an agreement.

In his new book Avoiding Armageddon, published by HarperCollins, Riedel, who was a senior adviser to four US presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues, explains the challenge and the importance of successfully managing America’s affairs with India and Pakistan and their toxic relationship.

Full of riveting details of what went on behind the scenes, and based on extensive research and Riedel’s experience, the book reviews the history of American diplomacy in South Asia, the crises that have flared in recent years, and the prospects for future crisis.

“Resolution of the Kashmir issue would also remove a major rationale for the army’s disproportionate role in Pakistani national security affairs; that in turn would help to ensure survival of genuine civilian democratic rule in the country,” he writes.

He believes that a resolution of the major outstanding issue between Islamabad and New Delhi would reduce the arms race between them and the risk of nuclear conflict.

“By eliminating Pakistan’s desire to wage asymmetric warfare against India, it would also discourage Pakistan from making alliances with the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and al Qaeda.”

According to Riedel, such an agreement would not resolve all the tensions between the two neighbours and the disputes on issues other than Kashmir are comparatively trivial.

“More than anything else, a Kashmir deal would set the stage for a different era in the sub-continent and for more productive interaction between the international community and Pakistan. It could set the stage for a genuine rapprochement between India and Pakistan and nurture trade and economic interaction, which could transform the subcontinent for the better,” he writes.

Riedel, who has had 29 years of experience in the CIA, feels the US has an important role to play.

“In his second term, President Obama should quietly but persistently work to create a coalition of friends of Pakistan that will come together to back a peace offensive to resolve South Asia’s unfinished business in Kashmir. It will not be easy, but it is critical,” he says.

A Kashmir solution, according to him, would have to be based on a formula for making the line of control both a permanent, conventional international border (perhaps with some minor modifications) and a permeable frontier between the two parts of Kashmir so that Kashmiri people could live more normal lives.

He suggests that a special condominium might be created to allow the two constituencies to work together on issues specific to the region, such as transportation, the environment, sports and tourism.

“For example, both the Indian and Pakistani currencies could become legal tender on both sides of the border, an idea recently floated in India. That would be a win-win-win approach. The Kashmiris would be the biggest winners since they would finally have peace and would be reunited.

“Pakistan would be a winner since it would no longer have to spend so much of its limited resources on trying to keep up with much larger India; it also could finally attack the jihadist monster it has created, which threatens its democracy and future. India would be a winner as well, since it would no longer face an insurgency in Kashmir and terrorism in its cities,” he writes.

Riedel also provides an in-depth look at the Mumbai terrorist attack in 2008 and he concludes with authoritative analysis on what the future is likely to hold for America and the South Asia puzzle as well as recommendations on how Washington should proceed.

Semi-covert wars fuelling drone boom: US activist

(New Delhi, Jun 14, 2013) Drones may have been used for non-lethal purposes but state-sponsored assassinations and semi-covert wars are fuelling their boom and not scientific missions or creative activists, says American political activist Medea Benjamin.

In her book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, the co-founder of the peace group CODEPINK and the international human rights organisation Global Exchange delves into the new warfare system affecting the Indian subcontinent, specially Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Drone Warfare looks at the growing menace of robotic warfare, with an extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who ‘pilots’ these unmanned planes, who are the victims, and what are the legal and moral implications.

It also looks at what activists, lawyers and scientists are doing to ground the drones, and ways to move forward.

“In reality,” writes Benjamin, “the assassinations the US is carrying out via drones will come back to haunt it when others start doing the same thing – to the Americans.”

Opposing the use of drones, she writes, “We need a vigorous debate and activism around a technology like drones that has a profound impact on our reputation, the ethical foundations of our society, the lives of innocent people, and ultimately, our security as a nation.”

Though she feels not all uses of unmanned aircraft are bad, she adds “but what are fuelling the drone boom are neither scientific missions nor creative activists, but state-sponsored assassinations and semi-covert wars”.

“And unfortunately, it is those latter pursuits – not a cure for cancer, say, or replacement for fossil fuels – to which some of the best scientific minds in the world today are dedicating their time.”

Environmental, human rights and even protest groups are starting to use drones. Drones were used after the earthquake in Japan to observe radiation levels at the Fukushima nuclear plant.

They were used in Australia to inspect the state of wildlife after a massive flood. They have great potential to help firefighters by hovering over swaths of burning forests.

Benjamim, however, says that drones now under development in research centres all over the country are designed to be more lethal, have greater autonomy, stay airborne for longer periods and have a more precise, broader vision of the battlefield.

“One technology under development is termed the ‘swarm’. Like a swarm of angry bees, a bevy of unmanned aerial, ground and sea vehicles would autonomously converge on enemy troops, aircraft and ship. Then they’d jointly decide their plan of attack, engage the enemy – all without direct human intervention,” says the book, published by HarperCollins.

Weeks after the 2002 American invasion of Afghanistan, Benjamin visited that country. There, on the ground, talking with victims of the strikes, she learned the reality behind the ‘precision bombs’ on which US forces were becoming increasingly reliant.

With the use of drones escalating at a meteoric pace, Benjamin has written this book as a call to action: “It is meant to wake a sleeping public,” she writes, “lulled into thinking that drones are good, that targeted killings are making us safer.”

Benjamin says drones don’t revolutionise surveillance, they are a “progressive evolution” in making spying, at home and abroad, more pervasive.

“Drones don’t revolutionise warfare; they are, rather, a progressive evolution in making murder clean and easy. That’s why the increased reliance on drones for killing and spying is not to be praised, but refuted. And challenged,” she suggests.

According to Benjamin, the surveillance capabilities of drones and their increasing use by domestic law enforcement agencies in the US and elsewhere threaten to eviscerate what’s left of our privacy rights.

“The sensors on drones are designed to monitor miles of terrain. No matter how targeted an investigation, you always risk the prying eye of the state observing your affairs,” she writes.