Crichton's Jurassic Park, Stieg Larsson's Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy, James Ellroy's crime fiction, and the Fifty Shades trilogy. Mehta recognized the importance of the new genre of graphic novels, publishing prize-winning titles Maus and Persepolis. Although Alfred A. Knopf has been publishing books for more than one hundred years, Mehta was only the third editor-in-chief. He told Vanity Fair in 2015: "On a good day, I am still convinced I have the best job in the world." The addition of Pantheon, Vintage Books, Schocken and Everyman's Library to the Knopf Publishing Group, and later the Doubleday group in 2009, all working under Mehta's direction, led to him being described as the world's most important anglophone publisher. On Alfred A. Knopf surviving threats to the publishing business and the tumult of acquisitions and mergers, Mehta said: "We're part of something that is very large but we concentrate on our way of doing things. It may be illusory to insulate oneself from it all, but we try." Awards and recognition Mehta won Lifetime Achievement Awards for publishing in India, the UK, and the United States. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Bard College in 2008. He was in the Hall of Fame in Vanity Fairs Best-Dressed Men in the World list. He was named 2015 Person of the Year by Publishers Weekly. In 2018, the Center for Fiction awarded Mehta the Maxwell E. Perkins Award, honouring the lifetime work of an editor, publisher or agent "who over the course of his or her career has discovered, nurtured and championed writers of fiction in the United States." Personal life In 1965, he married Gita Patnaik, daughter of Biju Patnaik and sister of Naveen Patnaik. She later became a documentary film-maker and writer under her married name. They had one son, Aditya Singh Mehta. Sonny Mehta died on 30 December 2019 at the age of 77, in Manhattan, New York, of complications from pneumonia. To celebrate his life, memorial events were held in New York and in London. The best-selling American author John Grisham dedicated his 2020 novel A Time for Mercy in memory of Mehta, as did the best-selling British author Robert Harris his V2. Bill Gates also credited his book "How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" to the late Sonny Mehta in his "Acknowledgements" chapter. Notes External links Entertainment Weekly, "The 101 Most Powerful People in Entertainment", November 1991,