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Rowling and the HP phenomenon

There is something heart-warming about the keen anticipation with which people wait for the release of a publication. Last year, the Spanish edition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Memories Of My Melancholy Whores — the great man's first novel in ten years — was awaited and snapped up with extraordinary eagerness in his native Columbia and much of Latin America. To defeat pirates flooding the region with bootleg versions, the Nobel Prize winning writer had to go so far as to alter the final chapter and advance the launch date. In India, during the Durga Puja season, large numbers of Bengalis form snaking queues in Kolkata to lay hands on poojobarsiki specials, published annually by newspaper houses. If such examples reinforce the social truth that the love of the printed word has done much better than survive in this restless age of television, computer gaming, the internet, and a myriad other distractions, then consider the tremendous worldwide interest over J. K. Rowling's newest HP novel. Even before its release on July 16, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth in the seven part series, has broken all manner of publishing records. The Half-Blood Prince has a first print run of 10.8 million copies in the United States alone; totted up pre-sales orders running into millions; and remained at the top of best-seller lists months before its release.

The jury may be hopelessly split on the literary abilities of J.K. Rowling. Is the HP series literary fiction or something else? Critics contend that her prose lacks the luminosity of other contemporary crossover novelists such as Philip Pullman and Mark Haddon; that the HP series is unimaginatively rooted in the cloistered environment of the English public school; and that her world of fantastic beasts, brave wizards, and enigmatically sinister villains has been traversed decades ago by the literary giants J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Literary fiction or not, Rowling's real distinction has been single-handedly to invigorate the global market for children's writing. In the context of the HP series, Rowling is at a crossroads. After the first two novels, relatively straightforward stuff aimed principally at very young children, her work has taken on a more intricate and complex character. The Prisoner of Azkaban introduced a touch of the sinister; The Goblet of Fire expanded on the themes of race and political oppression; and The Order of the Phoenix introduced even more shades of grey into a moral canvas that used to be black and white. Where Rowling goes from here will be important in assessing the fictional significance of her series. Nine years have passed since HP1 took the world of children by storm. The author has acquired a strong following among somewhat older readers — a circle that is looking forward to a novel that is more mature, multi-layered, and thought-provoking than her earlier work. The world will know on July 16 whether Rowling has risen to this expectation.

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