Ajai Singh "Sonny" Mehta was a British and American editor.
14 Facts About Sonny Mehta
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Sonny Mehta was educated at the Lawrence School, Sanawar, the International School of Geneva and Sevenoaks School in Kent, where he won an open scholarship to St Catharine's College, Cambridge.
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Sonny 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 Eunuch and brought American writers to the UK public with books including Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
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In 1987, Mehta moved from London to New York City to head the American literary imprint Alfred A Knopf as president and editor-in-chief.
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Sonny Mehta was chosen by Robert Gottlieb, who was leaving Knopf to edit The New Yorker.
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Sonny Mehta recognized the importance of the new genre of graphic novels, publishing prize-winning titles Maus and Persepolis.
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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 Sonny Mehta's direction, led to him being described as the world's most important anglophone publisher.
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Sonny Mehta won Lifetime Achievement Awards for publishing in India, the UK, and the United States.
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Sonny Mehta was awarded an honorary doctorate by Bard College in 2008.
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Sonny Mehta was in the Hall of Fame in Vanity Fairs Best-Dressed Men in the World list.
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Sonny Mehta was named 2015 Person of the Year by Publishers Weekly.
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Sonny Mehta later became a documentary film-maker and writer under her married name.
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Sonny Mehta died on 30 December 2019 at the age of 77, in Manhattan, New York, of complications from pneumonia.
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John Grisham dedicated his 2020 novel A Time for Mercy to the memory of Sonny Mehta, as did British author Robert Harris with his 2020 novel V2.