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Getting to know Mike Bryan

Mike Bryan, the newly named head of Penguin Canada, is largely an unknown quantity in this country. A candid profile, published two years ago in The Wall Street Journal when Bryan was stationed in Delhi, describes the 30-year company veteran as (not surprisingly) a bibliophile with a passion for fine wines and antique fountain pens. He also, it seems, has a taste for commercial fiction.

From The Wall Street Journal:

One of Bryan’s publishing dreams, it turns out, is to discover the Indian Tom Clancy or John Grisham ” a writer who will deliver the global English language mass-market best-seller. India has given the world Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Amitav Ghosh. There has got to be a Dan Brown somewhere waiting in the wings, he says.

I suggest that his team of editors at Penguin probably doesn’t share his enthusiasm for low-brow mass-market writers, and he demurs. I like my William Boyd and Rushdie, and I also like my Tom Clancy and Dan Brown, he says. How can you look down on Dan Brown when he has sold so many books?

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July 8th, 2010

1:03 pm

Category: Book news

Tagged with: Mike Bryan, Penguin Canada