Aleph Book Company is an Indian publishing company. It was founded in May 2011 by
David Davidar
David Davidar (born 27 September 1958) is an Indian novelist and publisher. He is the author of three published novels, ''The House of Blue Mangoes'' (2002), ''The Solitude of Emperors'' (2007), and ''Ithaca'' (2011). In parallel to his writing ...
, a novelist, publisher and former president of
Penguin Books Canada, in association with R. K. Mehra and
Kapish Mehra
Kapish Mehra is an Indian publishing executive. He is the Managing Director of Rupa & Co
Rupa Publications is an Indian publishing company based in New Delhi, with sales centres in Kolkata, Allahabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyde ...
of
Rupa Publications
Rupa Publications is an Indian publishing company based in New Delhi, with sales centres in Kolkata, Allahabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyderabad and Kathmandu.
Genesis
Rupa Publications was founded in 1936 by D. Mehra and R. K. Me ...
. The headquarters of the company is situated in New Delhi.
Genesis
On his return to India from Canada where he served as the president of
Penguin
Penguins (order (biology), order List of Sphenisciformes by population, Sphenisciformes , family (biology), family Spheniscidae ) are a group of Water bird, aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: on ...
Canada,
David Davidar
David Davidar (born 27 September 1958) is an Indian novelist and publisher. He is the author of three published novels, ''The House of Blue Mangoes'' (2002), ''The Solitude of Emperors'' (2007), and ''Ithaca'' (2011). In parallel to his writing ...
partnered
Rupa Publications
Rupa Publications is an Indian publishing company based in New Delhi, with sales centres in Kolkata, Allahabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyderabad and Kathmandu.
Genesis
Rupa Publications was founded in 1936 by D. Mehra and R. K. Me ...
to found Aleph Book Company in May 2011.
The key people at the time of inception were R. K. Mehra and Kapish Mehra of Rupa Publications, besides Davidar. The headquarters of the company is at New Delhi and the logo was designed by Rymn Massand, an inspiration from
Aleph
Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician , Hebrew , Aramaic , Syriac , Arabic ʾ and North Arabian 𐪑. It also appears as South Arabian 𐩱 and Ge'ez .
These letter ...
, the first letter of many of the
semitic abjads
An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowel ...
.
Business profile
The company publishes both fiction and non-fiction and has an author profile ranging from lesser known writers to established ones such as
Romila Thapar
Romila Thapar (born 30 November 1931) is an Indian historian. Her principal area of study is ancient India, a field in which she is pre-eminent. Quotr: "The pre-eminent interpreter of ancient Indian history today. ... " Thapar is a Professor ...
,
Shashi Tharoor
Shashi Tharoor (; ; born 9 March 1956 in London, England ) is an Indian former international civil servant, diplomat, bureaucrat and politician, writer and public intellectual who has been serving as Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, ...
,
Khushwant Singh
Khushwant Singh (born Khushal Singh, 2 February 1915 – 20 March 2014) was an Indian author, lawyer, diplomat, journalist and politician. His experience in the 1947 Partition of India inspired him to write ''Train to Pakistan'' in 1956 (made ...
,
Cyrus Mistry
Cyrus Pallonji Mistry (4 July 1968 – 4 September 2022) was an Indian businessman. He was the chairman of the Tata Group, an Indian business conglomerate, from 2012 to 2016. He was the sixth chairman of the group, and only the second (af ...
,
Ruskin Bond
Ruskin Bond (born 19 May 1934) is an Anglo-Indian author . His first novel, ''The Room on the Roof'', was published in 1956, and it received the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1957. Bond has authored more than 500 short stories, essays, and n ...
,
Rajmohan Gandhi
Rajmohan Gandhi (born 7 August 1935) is an Indian biographer, historian, and research professor at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US. His paternal grandfather is Mahatma Gandhi, ...
and
Vikram Seth
Vikram Seth (born 20 June 1952) is an Indian novelist and poet. He has written several novels and poetry books. He has won several awards such as Padma Shri, Sahitya Academy Award, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, WH Smith Literary Award and Crosswor ...
, among others.
With a focus on Indian and other South Asian countries, the company publishes books in various genres including fiction, history, biography, autobiography, current events, reportage, travel, popular science, art, music, nature studies, the environment, business, translations, philosophy, sociology, psychology and popular culture.
Some of its publications have received various literary awards such as
DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature is an international literary prize awarded annually to writers of any ethnicity or nationality writing about South AsiaNote: South Asia for the purposes of the prize is defined as India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka ...
,
Sahitya Akademi Award
The Sahitya Akademi Award is a literary honour in India, which the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters, annually confers on writers of the most outstanding books of literary merit published in any of the 22 languages of the ...
and Ramnath Goenka Award.
It regularly publishes its catalog under the title, ''The Book of Aleph''.
Selected publications
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References
External links
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Book publishing company imprints
Publishing companies established in 2011
2011 establishments in Delhi
Book publishing companies of India
Companies based in New Delhi