Thank Him for Bringing Elie Wiesel's Night to America

Literary tastes in the US might look very different if not for Georges Borchardt. The New York Times reports the influential literary agent, who died Sunday at 97, was the person who found a US publisher for Elie Wiesel's Holocaust memoir Night—a process that involved 14 rejections from leading publishers who dismissed it as too morbid. A Jewish refugee who arrived in New York in 1947 as a 19-year-old orphan and Holocaust survivor, Borchardt more or less stumbled into the book world after finding a job with a literary agent who found the fact he spoke French appealing—and went on to change it.

The Times makes clear his impact in a single sentence: "At various times, he or the Manhattan agency that he and his wife, Anne Borchardt, founded in 1967, Georges Borchardt Inc., represented five Nobel laureates, eight Pulitzer Prize-winners, and one statesman, the French president Charles de Gaulle." His roster included Ian McEwan and the estates of Tennessee Williams and Aldous Huxley.

Borchardt helped introduce Samuel Beckett to US readers, negotiating a deal for Waiting for Godot, and brought works by Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others across the Atlantic. Night, which was acquired for $250 and sold an initial 1,000 copies, would ultimately reach millions and become a classroom staple. For more on Borchardt's life and career, read the full piece.