Latest revision as of 19:43, 23 September 2022

[edit] A brief biography

January 1, 2020: The Times of India

Son of a diplomat, Mehta headed the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for more than three decades after joining in 1987. The publishing giant completed its 100 years in 2015.

After completing his schooling at Sanawar School and partially in England, Mehta had graduated from the prestigious Cambridge University. Known as one of the finest editors of the world, Mehta had won many accolades in India, UK and USA. He was named the 2015 Publishers Weekly Person of the Year, said a source in the CMO.

Both Sonny and Gita visited Naveen Niwas, the residence of the chief minister here, in March. Writers, publishers and leaders mourned Mehta’s death. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also mourned the death of the well-known publisher.

“Sonny Mehta would be fondly remembered by countless avid readers across the world. He endeared himself to many, thanks to his erudite and knowledgable personality. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to Gita Ji, you, your family and his admirers. Om Shanti,” Modi tweeted. In the evening, the Prime Minister also spoke to Naveen over telephone to express his condolence, said CMO sources.

BJP national vice-president Baijayant Panda also took to Twitter to express his condolences over Mehta’s demise. “Deeply saddened at the passing of Ajay Singh Sonny Mehta, world famous publisher & wonderful human being. Condolences to his son, wife Gita, herself an accomplished author, brothers-in-law Prem & @Naveen_Odisha Patnaik, & families. May his soul rest in peace, Om Shanti,” Baijayant wrote on the micro-blogging site.

In his condolence message on Twitter, renowned historian Ramachandra Guha said, “Deeply distressed to hear of the passing of Sonny Mehta. A truly great editor and a wonderfully warm and compassionate human being.”

[edit] A

January 8, 2020: The New York Times

Sonny Mehta was the literary savant who guided the reading hours of millions of people and the fortunes of the venerable publisher Alfred A. Knopf for 32 years at a time of changing tastes, aggressive merchandising and demands for profits.

In an age of blockbuster best sellers by presidents and prime ministers, of sometimes surreal and shocking literary breakthroughs, and of cutthroat competition in a shrinking industry, Mr. Mehta was an almost ideal editor and publishing executive: a voracious reader and instinctive decision maker who could spot great books and, coming from a paperback world, had no qualms about aggressively marketing them.

On his watch, first as Knopf’s president and editor in chief and since 2009 as chairman of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Mr. Mehta delivered literary quality and runaway sales, backed by clever promotion — he once invited 250 booksellers to a Los Angeles Dodgers game to launch a baseball book — that drew reviewers and sellers to almost anything stamped with Knopf’s colophon: the leaping Borzoi wolfhound.

He published the work of nine Nobel literature laureates, including Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Remains of the Day” (1989), and of winners of Pulitzer and Booker prizes and National Book Awards; memoirs by former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and Pope John Paul II; and new translations of Tolstoy, Thomas Mann and Albert Camus.

Mr. Mehta also published popular books by Toni Morrison, John Updike, Anne Rice, John le Carré, P.D. James and Gabriel García Márquez; Geoffrey Ward’s companion to Ken Burns’s PBS series “The Civil War”; Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”; Stieg Larsson’s Dragon Tattoo trilogy; and the work of many important French, German, Italian, Spanish, African and Asian writers.

For Knopf’s classic imprint — now more than a century old — Mr. Mehta was only the third editor in chief, following the founder Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Robert A. Gottlieb, who joined Knopf in 1968 and, on the cusp of his departure to edit The New Yorker, handpicked Mr. Mehta in 1987 as his successor.

Ajai Singh Mehta, known as Sonny, was the son of one of independent India’s first diplomats. As a boy he had lived with his father on postings in Europe and the United States, and he was educated at private schools in India, Switzerland and Britain and at Cambridge University.

He began his career as a paperback publisher in Britain, commissioning Germaine Greer’s feminist treatise “The Female Eunuch” and works by Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie. But he was hardly anyone’s idea of an eminence grise when he was plucked from relative obscurity as publisher of Pan Books, Britain’s paperback king, to run America’s most storied hardcover imprint.

Settling into Knopf’s cluttered offices with the carefree aplomb of a court jester, the black-bearded boss seemed amusedly uninterested in literary power and the genteel back-stabbing politics of the publishing world. He wore black sweaters and black jeans, drank black-label Scotch in his office without ever appearing drunk, and for years worked in a cloud of his own cigarette smoke.

He was not easy to know. Some colleagues called him reserved and moody, aloof in a way that gave him an enigmatic magnetism. But others said he could also be charming and gregarious, especially at the frequent book parties he gave at his nearby apartment. In later years, he attended events all over Manhattan and became known for a more extravagant man-about-town night life.

A Bold Approach

But in his first year on the job, he was all work. He signed up 32 books, including biographies, novels and titles about Broadway, Hawaii and India. He ordered much larger first printings than his predecessor had, often doubling them — an aggressiveness seemingly born of confidence that he would be able to sell them as easily as he had mass-marketed paperbacks.

“Yes, there is something attractive about taking risks,” he told The New York Times in 1988. “I’m more marketing- and sales-oriented than others, and the notion of selling books continues to interest me. Just because we’re Knopf doesn’t mean we shouldn’t sell books as well as any other publisher in the land. I still want us to publish the best books in every area. I want us to remain the classiest publisher in town.”

In 1989, with the arrival of Alberto Vitale as the hard-charging chief executive of Knopf’s parent, Random House, Mr. Mehta found a powerful new ally. They both had strong backgrounds in competitive paperback sales and promotion, and Mr. Vitale told The Times that Mr. Mehta was “without question the most brilliant publisher in the country,” adding, “He is phenomenal, he has everything.”