The new novel Altar of Bones, written by a famous author under a pseudonym, has attracted a lot of speculation. John O'Connell looks at the various reasons well-known writers choose to publish books under other names
Travel on the underground in London at the moment and you can't avoid posters advertising a novel called Altar of Bones. The book's jacket image (a large key, lots of skulls) is a fair indication of what lies within: a preposterous but gripping post-Da Vinci Code conspiracy thriller about a shrine in a Siberian cave which has the power to bestow eternal youth. Its author: Philip Carter.
Philip Carter, however, is a pseudonym. And while there is nothing particularly unusual about this, what is interesting in this case is that Carter is what the publicity blurb calls an "internationally renowned" thriller writer who does not want his true identity to be revealed.
Massive interest in the book at the manuscript stage resulted in an auction where publishers bid frenziedly against one another. In the end, Simon & Schuster triumphed, paying a "healthy" (read enormous) sum for Altar of Bones and a second book to be published next year.
Carter's editor, Maxine Hitchcock, insists that even at this stage no one at the company knew who the writer really was. "We were told at the time of submission by the agent that the author was well known and already published, but that the agent wasn't revealing his or her identity at that moment. While it got tongues wagging and increased the intrigue, it didn't influence us one way or the other in terms of making an offer. It was the plot, the tension, the suspense and the drama that had us hooked."
The author could have been any number of people and Hitchcock says some big names were bandied about, including Stephen King and Dan Brown himself. "What was possibly the most interesting part was the speculation over the author's gender," she says. "People were convinced they could tell just by certain scenes whether the author was a man or a woman, although interestingly opinions were divided straight down the middle." Altar of Bones is pacey and compelling, an excellent example of its genre, and I believe Hitchcock when she says she would have bought the book regardless and that the "author's identity is irrelevant". At the same time, an author's identity can be allowed to remain irrelevant nowadays only if the ultimate goal is to create a brand more powerful than that author.
Nothing facilitates this goal like a nom de plume. After all, it can be anything you like, and fine-tuned to reflect a book's style and subject matter. Would HarperCollins's Sam Bourne thrillers have been anything like as successful if they'd been published under the name of their author, the Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland? No, because "Bourne" has been chosen to evoke Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne novels, to which Freedland is paying obvious homage.
The nom de plume has been with us as long as writing itself. Think of Mark Twain (actually Samuel Clemens), Lewis Carroll (the mathematician Charles Dodgson) and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). The Brontë sisters published poetry pseudonymously because they feared it would not be taken seriously otherwise - "authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice".
Joe Klein was an established political writer when he published Primary Colours as Anonymous. The initials of SE Hinton, the author of The Outsiders, stood for Susan Eloise. Would boys have been less inclined to read her teen-gang classic had they known it was written by a woman? Bloomsbury was not taking any chances. When it signed up Joanne Rowling and her funny little books about a boy wizard, they insisted she become JK Rowling for maximum gender inclusiveness. You can't say it didn't work.
The phenomenon of established authors using pseudonyms to publish different sorts of books from the ones they became famous for is also well known. The Lucky Jim author Kingsley Amis wrote the first non-Ian Fleming James Bond novel, Colonel Sun, as Robert Markham. Ruth Rendell created the alter ego Barbara Vine (derived from her own middle name and her grandmother's maiden name) to distinguish the Inspector Wexford crime procedurals, for which she was largely known, from her more Gothic, psychological thrillers such as A Fatal Inversion and A Dark-Adapted Eye.
Iain Banks has long published science fiction novels under the name Iain M Banks. Stephen King started using the nom de plume Richard Bachman in the late 1970s, partly because he wanted to publish more than one book a year and feared over-saturating the market, and partly to prove to himself that his success was a result of talent rather than luck.
Often, when an already-successful "literary" writer publishes under a different name, it's because he wants to slum it for cash as a genre writer. Years ago, Julian Barnes interspersed his "proper" novels with hard-boiled thrillers by one Dan Kavanagh - a moniker arrived at by conjoining the names of his editor Dan Franklin and late wife, the literary agent Pat Kavanagh. John Banville has an ongoing sideline penning crime novels as Benjamin Black.
That Banville's Black books are reviewed as respectfully as his literary novels is a measure of how far old genre snobberies have been eroded. As the journalist Stephanie Merritt, who writes successful historical thrillers as SJ Parris, has observed, pseudonyms are now adopted not because a writer is embarrassed by books he may have written for the money, but because he wants to carve out a distinct identity for them.
Of her own thrillers, Merritt wrote: "They felt so new and different in flavour that I wanted to give them a chance to make their own way in the world, free of any expectations created by the books I had written previously." Her pseudonym was intended not to mask her identity but to signal to prospective readers that if they liked books by the non-pseudonymous CJ Samson, then they might like hers too.
Underpinning this, of course, is the desire to make some money. As the literary agent Antony Topping of Greene & Heaton observes, the use of pseudonyms by the already famous "could be because the Bookscan figures for their real, famous names aren't all that they might be, in the context of trying to jump into a more populist genre where the publisher is hoping for the book to be picked up in a big way by WH Smith and the supermarkets. Also, the trade loves a debut and is sometimes inclined to give more visibility to a new name than a tested name".
Who, then, is the author of Altar of Bones? My guess is Harlan Coben. For one thing, Philip Carter thanks Coben's agent Aaron Priest at the start. For another, the phrase "tell no one" - the title of Coben's most famous book - has been worked into the back-cover blurb. This last detail, obviously, suggests that Simon & Schuster know a good deal more than they are letting on. But if they do, and they surely must, who can blame them for trying to create an air of mystery? As Hitchcock says: "In this day and age, with so much competition from all media, not just other books, it's important to stand out, to get noticed and to get people talking."
How much sugar is in chocolate Easter eggs?
- The 169g Crunchie egg has 15.9g of sugar per 25g serving, working out at around 107g of sugar per egg
- The 190g Maltesers Teasers egg contains 58g of sugar per 100g for the egg and 19.6g of sugar in each of the two Teasers bars that come with it
- The 188g Smarties egg has 113g of sugar per egg and 22.8g in the tube of Smarties it contains
- The Milky Bar white chocolate Egg Hunt Pack contains eight eggs at 7.7g of sugar per egg
- The Cadbury Creme Egg contains 26g of sugar per 40g egg
Drivers’ championship standings after Singapore:
1. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes - 263
2. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari - 235
3. Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes - 212
4. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull - 162
5. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari - 138
6. Sergio Perez, Force India - 68
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
At a glance
Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
Welfare: Universal credit health element cut by 50 per cent and frozen for new claimants, building on cuts to the disability and incapacity bill set out earlier this month
Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
Defence: New high-tech weaponry, upgrading HM Naval Base in Portsmouth
Housing: Housebuilding to reach its highest in 40 years, with planning reforms helping generate an extra £3.4bn for public finances
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Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
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Sustainable Development Goals
1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all
9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation
10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable
12. Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its effects
14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development
15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development
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Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
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WBO Light Welterweight champion - 2004-06
WBA Welterweight champion – 2006-08
WBO Welterweight champion – Feb 2009-Nov 2009
WBA Light Middleweight champion – 2010-12
WBC Middleweight champion – 2014-15
WBO Light Middleweight champion – Aug 2017-Dec 2017
Dubai Bling season three
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