Who

Legendary publisher Sonny Mehta is head of the Random House division Knopf Doubleday, which publishes literary heavyweights as well as airport blockbusters.

Backstory

The son of an Indian diplomat, Ajai Singh Mehta spent his childhood in India and Switzerland before moving to England to attend Cambridge. After briefly considering a career as a writer, he joined London publisher Paladin and made a splash in 1970 with the publication of groundbreaking feminist tome The Female Eunuch, which he had encouraged his Cambridge classmate Germaine Greer to write. By 1972 Mehta was running paperback giant Pan Books, and he spent more than a decade and a half as one of the most prominent figures on the British publishing scene.

The opportunity to conquer the New York publishing market came in 1987 when Mehta got a call from then-Random House chairman Si Newhouse, who asked him to move to New York and take over Knopf, replacing editor Robert Gottlieb, who left to succeed William Shawn as editor of The New Yorker. Mehta accepted the job and moved stateside. But his early days in New York were reportedly rocky as he contended with culture shock and spent late nights out on the town—more than once publishing wags buzzed that he was on the verge of dismissal. He eventually found his stride and has since upheld Knopf's reputation as a bastion of quality literature while turning Knopf imprint Vintage, which he took over in 1989, into a successful trade paperback name.

In December '08 Mehta's power expanded when, amid mass restructuring at Random House, Knopf absorbed Doubleday's flagship imprint and Nan Talese's namesake imprint to be renamed Knopf Doubleday. Mehta continues to work closely with Knopf president Tony Chirico, editor-in-chief Gary Fisketjon, and publicity chief Paul Bogaards, as well as Talese and revered Doubleday editor Phyllis Grann.

Of note

Knopf is viewed as a bastion of high-brow literature—the New York Review of Books best of 2008 selection included eight Knopf titles in a list of ten—but the imprint has also been responsible for some major commercial breakouts. During his tenure, Mehta has signed up big hits like Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho and Donna Tartt's The Secret History. Other mega-writers he's published include Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, Anne Rice, Haruki Marukami, Joan Didion, V.S. Naipaul, Jay McInerney, Robert Caro, Cormac McCarthy, and John Updike.

In the past couple of years, Knopf has had the good fortune of having Oprah pick two Vintage books for her book club, Cormac McCarthy's The Road and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. But Mehta isn't above plunking down big dollars for a high-profile acquisition. He famously handed over $10 million to Bill Clinton for his memoir My Life. More recently Knopf, in conjunction with Random House UK division Hutchinson, dished out $9 million for Tony Blair's forthcoming memoir. 

Now, with the absorption of Doubleday into Knopf, Mehta will be overseeing many authors who are shamelessly commercial, such as John Grisham and Dan Brown, which may well dilute Knopf's literary prestige even as it swells its coffers. 

Medical file

A longtime smoker and heavy boozer, Mehta was admitted to the hospital with chest pains in 1999 and subsequently underwent emergency triple heart bypass surgery. He continues to smoke and drink, although he's reportedly cut back on his bad habits just a bit in recent years.

Grudge

Mehta's rivalry with fellow publishing star Ann Godoff dates back more than a decade. When Godoff was head of the sister Random House imprint "Little Random" in the late 1990s/early '00s, the two regularly went head-to-head for hot new titles, with each claiming their division was the more prestigious. Peter Olson's decision to give Godoff the boot in 2003 was seen by many as vindication for Mehta.

Personal

Mehta is married to author (and daughter of the late Indian politician Biju Patnaik) Gita Mehta. They met as students at Cambridge. The Mehtas have one son and divide their time between New York, India, and London.

True story

British author Douglas Adams claimed that he finished 1984's So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish only after Mehta sequestered him in a hotel room and literally watched over him until the book was complete.