GetWiki

{{short description|Indian publisher (1942–2019)}}{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2020}}

factoids

| birth_place = New Delhi, British Indiadf=y12194209}}| death_place = New York City, U.S.| education = {hide}Ubl Gita Mehta2019}}| relatives = Biju Patnaik (father-in-law)Naveen Patnaik (brother-in-law)| children = 1}}Ajai Singh "Sonny" Mehta (9 November 1942McFadden, Robert D. (31 December 2019), "Sonny Mehta, Venerable Knopf Publisher, Is Dead at 77", The New York Times. – 30 December 2019)WEB,weblink Knopf Doubleday Chairman Sonny Mehta Dies at 77, Michael, Cader, 31 December 2019, Publishers Lunch, was a British and American editor. Mehta was the 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 the Royal Indian Air Force and among the first of independent India's diplomats,Amrik Singh Mehta. Bharat Rakshak. and Satinder (Duggal) Singh. As a child, Mehta lived all over the world, including Prague, New York City, Nepal and Geneva. He was educated at the Lawrence School, Sanawar, and Sevenoaks School in Kent, where he won an open scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge.WEB,weblink How We Met: Sir Richard Eyre and Gita Mehta, Glenda, Cooper, 7 September 1997, 1 January 2020, The Independent, At Cambridge University he read History and English Literature and worked on the magazine Granta.

Career

Mehta began his publishing career in 1965 in London at Rupert Hart-Davis, then joined Granada Publishing in 1966 to co-found a new publishing house, Paladin, where he commissioned Germaine Greer's influential The Female EunuchBOOK, Germaine Greer: Untamed Shrew, Wallace, Christine, Faber and Faber, 1999, 9780571199341, registration,weblink and brought American writers to the UK public with books including Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Moving to Pan Books in 1972, Mehta added to its list of best-selling authors by publishing writers who went on to become household names, including Jackie Collins and Douglas Adams, and launched there the Picador imprint, publishing Booker Prize winners Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie, Edmund White, Julian Barnes and Graham Swift, as well as Ryszard Kapuściński, Angela Carter, Bret Easton Ellis and Michael Herr, leading The Times to describe his tenure as producing "the Picador Generation".WEB, History – Picador,weblink www.picador.com, 9 September 2015, Picador, In 1987, Mehta moved from London to New York CityMAGAZINE, The King of the Heap, Jack, Ian, Ian Jack, May 1987, Vanity Fair, JOURNAL,weblink Top of the Heap: Why an English editor got the best job in American book publishing, Durden-Smith, Jo, Jo Durden-Smith, June 1987, The Connoisseur (magazine), Connoisseur, to head the American literary imprint Alfred A. Knopf as president and editor-in-chief.WEB, A Century of Alfred A. Knopf,weblink Clare, Swanson, 15 May 2015, 9 September 2015, Mehta was chosen by Robert Gottlieb, who was leaving Knopf to edit The New Yorker. On Mehta's watch, Knopf published six Nobel literature laureatesWEB, All Nobel Prizes in Literature,weblink www.nobelprize.org, 9 September 2015, (Kazuo Ishiguro, Alice Munro, Orhan Pamuk, Imre Kertész, V. S. Naipaul, and Toni Morrison),Cowdrey, Katherine (31 December 2019), "Sonny Mehta dies aged 77", The Bookseller. numerous Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize and National Book Award winners, and continued the tradition of publishing important French, German, Italian, Spanish, Scandinavian, South American, African, and Asian writers as well as work by such contemporary leaders as U.S. presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, UK Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and Pope John Paul II. Mehta's tenure at Knopf featured new translations of Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil, and Albert Camus; bestsellersWEB,weblink The Unknown Prince of Publishing, Tarun J., Tejpal, Tarun Tejpal, 19 June 2013, India Today, included Ken Burns's history of the Civil War, Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park, Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, James Ellroy's crime fiction, and the Fifty Shades trilogy. Mehta recognized the importance of the new genre of graphic novels, publishing prize-winning titles Maus and Persepolis.Although Alfred A. Knopf has been publishing books for more than one hundred years, Mehta was only the third editor-in-chief. He told Vanity Fair in 2015: "On a good day, I am still convinced I have the best job in the world."MAGAZINE,weblink Why Knopf Editor in Chief Sonny Mehta Still Has the 'Best Job in the World', Eggers, Dave, Dave Eggers, Vanity Fair, 15 September 2015, 8 April 2016, The addition of Pantheon, Vintage Books, Schocken and Everyman's Library to the Knopf Publishing Group, and later the Doubleday group in 2009, all working under Mehta's direction, led to him being described as the world's most important anglophone publisher.On Alfred A. Knopf surviving threats to the publishing business and the tumult of acquisitions and mergers, Mehta said: "We're part of something that is very large but we concentrate on our way of doing things. It may be illusory to insulate oneself from it all, but we try."

Awards and recognition

Mehta won Lifetime Achievement Awards for publishing in India, the UK,WEB,weblink Sonny Mehta to receive LBF Lifetime Achievement Award, Katie, Allen, 8 March 2011, The Bookseller, and the United States.WEB, Nobel winner Venkatraman Ramakrishnan is India Abroad Person of [the year], Bloomberg L.P., Bloomberg,weblink 6 March 2012, 9 September 2015, He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Bard College in 2008.WEB, Bard Press Release {{!, Congressman Charles B. Rangel To Deliver Commencement Address at Bard College's 148th Commencement On Saturday, 24 May|url =weblink|website = www.bard.edu|date=2008|access-date =9 September 2015|last = Bard College}} He was in the Hall of Fame in Vanity Fair{{'}}s Best-Dressed Men in the World list.MAGAZINE, The International Best-Dressed Hall of Fame 2015,weblink 5 August 2015, 9 September 2015, Vanity Fair, He was named 2015 Person of the Year by Publishers Weekly.Deahl, Rachel (4 December 2015), "Sonny Mehta: 2015 PW Person of the Year", Publishers Weekly.In 2018, the Center for Fiction awarded Mehta the Maxwell E. Perkins Award, honouring the lifetime work of an editor, publisher or agent "who over the course of his or her career has discovered, nurtured and championed writers of fiction in the United States.""Sonny Mehta Receives Maxwell E. Perkins Award from the Center for Fiction", News, Penguin Random House, 17 December 2018.

Personal life

In 1965, he married Gita Patnaik, daughter of Biju Patnaik and sister of Naveen Patnaik.WEB,weblink 'One of world's best editors': Alfred A Knopf's Sonny Mehta passes away, 31 December 2019, The Indian Express, en-US, 31 December 2019, She later became a documentary film-maker and writer under her married name. They had one son, Aditya Singh Mehta.Sonny Mehta died on 30 December 2019 at the age of 77, in Manhattan, New York, of complications from pneumonia.NEWS,weblink Sonny Mehta, head of publisher Knopf, dies aged 77, Associated Press in New York, The Guardian, 31 December 2019, To celebrate his life, memorial events were held in New YorkNEWS,weblink Hundreds Turn Out to Remember Sonny Mehta, Jim, Milliot, Publishers Weekly, 20 February 2020, 12 November 2020, and in London.WEB,weblink Markus Dohle: 'I work for Sonny', Publishing Perspectives, Roger, Tagholm, 10 March 2020, John Grisham dedicated his 2020 novel A Time for Mercy to the memory of Mehta,WEB,weblink A Time for Mercy by John Grisham: 9780593157824 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books, PenguinRandomhouse.com, as did British author Robert Harris with his 2020 novel V2.

Notes

{{Reflist}}

External links

• Entertainment Weekly, "The 101 Most Powerful People in Entertainment", November 1991, October 1995, October 1996, October 1997.
• Roger Cohen, "New Publishing Star, Sonny Mehta, Talks Profits As Well As Art", The New York Times 13 November 1990.
• Edwin McDowell, "After A Year, Knopf Shows the Impact of Its New Publisher", The New York Times, 26 March 1988.

{{Authority control}}