Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Russian publisher prints books about Putin under names of western authors
Writers consider legal action against Moscow publishing house after discovering series about president circulated in their names. The Moscow Times reports
Writers say they were unaware of the collection of books known as Project Putin. Photograph: Mikhail Klimentyev/AP
Howard Amos for The Moscow Times, part of the New East network
A Russian publishing house has printed a series of books about Vladimir Putin under the names of prominent western analysts and journalists – without the knowledge or permission of the so-called authors. The Guardian’s Luke Harding, The Economist’s Edward Lucas and US-based Russia expert Donald Jensen say that they did not know anything about Russian-language books attributed to them and produced by the Moscow publishers Algoritm in a series called Project Putin. Harding says that his publisher, Guardian Books, will decide whether to take legal action against Algoritm once it has investigated. “The first I heard about it was a couple of weeks ago when a Russian friend said he’d spotted ‘my book’ in a Moscow bookstore,” said the former Moscow correspondent, adding: “Normally publishers buy rights, translate, then put out an edition.” Nobody But Putin, the book under Harding’s name, is advertised on Algoritm’s website as “developing the idea” of his previous (and officially published) work Mafia State.
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