David Davidar quits Penguin Canada

The book world is abuzz with the news of David Davidar quitting Penguin Canada. This former poster boy of Indian publishing -- he founded and developed Penguin India from a basement office in South Delhi to the top of the country’s publishing in English -- plans to returned to India to focus on his writing, the Times of India says. The author of bestselling novels The House of Blue Mangoes ( that I tossed aside after reading 50 pages) and The Solitude of Emperors (which I did not bother to read) was appointed president of Penguin Canada in 2004.

News emerging from Canada, however, gives the story a slightly different spin. Publisher’s Weekly says of the ‘surprise resignation’: “... the company issued a statement Friday afternoon announcing that Penguin’s former rights and contracts director Lisa Rundle charged Davidar with sexual harassment in an action yesterday. The statement added that Davidar was asked to leave the company last month, and while it had been unclear just when Davidar’s resignation, announced Tuesday, would become effective, Penguin said he will have no further involvement with the company.”

Rundle has also file ‘wrongful termination’ charges against Penguin, claiming damages of $423,000.

However, more sordid details emerge from The Globe and Mail.

Ms. Rundle claimed that she was fired for complaining about Mr. Davidar’s “harassing and vexatious behaviour.”

Mr. Davidar said he intends to fight the charges ‘vigorously’.

Last year, he (Davidar) is said to have written (emails) that he “could do very little except think of [Ms. Rundle],” that she was “utterly gorgeous,” “a vision in pink sipping a champagne cocktail,” and that she should not be “stubborn” or “fight” him.

(According to the claim), Mr. Davidar appeared at Ms. Rundle’s hotel room door (in Frankfurt), “wearing excessive cologne, with buttons on his shirt undone down his waist.”

Ms. Rundle claims she climbed on a windowsill to avoid her boss and again asked him to leave. “He forcibly pulled her off the ledge and grabbed her by the wrists, forcing his tongue into her mouth,” says a source.

Wahhh!

The Globe and the Mail

Publisher’s Weekly

Times of India