A huge event is facing the reading world: the simultaneous worldwide release on June 21 of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in the mega-selling series by JK Rowling. Thanks to the ring of steel thrown around its gestation and printing, not much is known about this new book, except that it is even longer than the last one, which was fatter than the first three combined.
Nonetheless, the world is waiting with bated breath. Let’s fly across the globe to see how the new book is likely to be received.
It was no surprise when Harry Potter became a hit in Indonesia after translations appeared in 1999. Superstition, witchcraft and the paranormal have always been deeply rooted in Indonesian culture, despite the veneer of Islam. Stories about black magic and sorcerers regularly make headlines across the sprawling archipelago, most famously in 1999 when much of East Java was gripped by fear after reports of satanic ninjas terrorising communities swept the province. Gangs of vigilantes were established and dozens of people believed to have “dark” supernatural powers were murdered in a spate of revenge attacks.
Jakarta bookshop director Richard Oh has no doubts about why Indonesians of all ages identify with the magic of Harry, Ron and Hermione. “We believe in animism and the fact that every object has a spirit,” he says. “Indonesian people are by nature very superstitious and also believe in secret societies and people with magical powers.”
The book’s distributor says of the Harry Potter series so far: “To describe them as best-sellers would be an understatement. They have broken all records.”
In Germany, the second Harry Potter movie (… and the Chamber of Secrets) was seen by one in seven members of the population. For Germans, Potter has an obvious literary forerunner in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Goethe’s 1799 poem about a young student wizard who overreaches himself in his master’s absence. The comparison is often made in German reviews. But for the critic and author Robin Detje, the genre remains quintessentially British. “It’s astonishingly reasonable: this little girl [Hermione Granger] who goes to the library to solve these mysteries, for example. It’s all very empirical in [the] British tradition. I think Heidegger would have been bored.”
Yet the product promotion that is part and parcel of the phenomenon has come in for some very Teutonic scrutiny. The eco-conscious magazine Oko-Test decided to try out 18 Harry Potter fan products and its researchers discovered that many were as environmentally unfriendly as any sorcerer’s brew. In particular, a toy version of Harry Potter’s much-envied broom, the Nimbus 2000, contained chlorinated plastic and other unpleasant ingredients. The magazine described the broom as a “time-bomb of harmful chemicals”.
In Japan, enthusiasm couldn’t be higher. Cashing in on Japan’s Anglophilia and love of manga-like fantasy, Potter-marketers have cunningly targeted a more grown-up audience than in other countries. Harry Potter displays are not found in the children’s section, but among collections of best-sellers for adults. The dark sleeve design features spooky silhouettes instead of the bespectacled schoolboy who grins from covers in Britain.
France, on the other hand, has heard some predictable grumblings about the ravages of Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism. Yet most of the country has fallen happily under Potter’s spell. The best-selling series has won three children’s book prizes. It has been adopted with grateful enthusiasm by French teachers, who say it has succeeded in attracting a generation of Pokémon and Playstation-obsessed pupils who otherwise risked losing interest in reading altogether.
France being France, the Potter phenomenon has been come under close scrutiny from intellectuals. One analyst, Serge Tisseron, says Rowling’s works are plainly “a transposition of the problems of adolescence into an imaginary universe: novels of initiation for a generation that has lost its bearings”.
Although the French are well aware that Potter is part of a very British tradition, the country can claim one little piece of the Potter legend as its own: in a Paris backstreet in the Marais is a medieval building once owned by Nicolas Flamel, the real-life inspiration for the sorcerer in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The house at 51, rue de Montmorency, now a restaurant, was originally an almshouse for the poor opened by the wealthy scribe, bookseller, philanthropist and amateur alchemist, who in 1382 claimed to have turned worthless lead into pure gold.
Sadly, the present-day owner of the Auberge, Nicolas Flamel, Nathan Hercberg, is unimpressed by the Potter connection and refuses point-blank to pepper his establishment with Potter paraphernalia. “All I want to do is preserve a piece of history,” he said recently. “We do not plan to turn into Planet Hollywood.”
With 1,5-million copies already sold in China, the Harry Potter books have leapt the culture gap more successfully than any other modern Western work. Why? Perhaps because, as in Indonesia, they tap into ancient stories about magic and fantasy — something that has been absent from Chinese children’s literature for many years.
Wang Quangen of Beijing Normal University told the People’s Daily it was high time for children’s books to lighten up: “There has long been a misconception that [their] main function is to educate. In the 1960s, even factors like ‘class struggle’ were included in children’s stories.”
By the end of last year, three unauthorised “additional” Harry Potter books — numbers five, six and seven — were on sale. The first was called Harry Potter and the Leopard-Walk-up-to-Dragon. It told the tale of how Harry allegedly turned into a hairy dwarf after being soaked in a “sour-sweet rain”.
In a rare case of successful action against piracy, a publishing house in Chengdu has now been fined and compelled to publish an apology in a Chinese law newspaper for printing one of the books.
In Spain, Potter has once more brought children to books in unprecedented numbers. Barcelona’s La Vanguardia newspaper turned to the critic JE Ruiz-Domenec for an explanation. He found that Potter’s wizardry school, Hogwarts, teaches that “one part of life is learning to live with others. Hidden from the world in this space of solidarity, the students learn to control their selfish impulses, their destructive tendencies, their laziness and their delight in rudeness.” The sport of quidditch, he says, stems from Nietzsche’s idea of play as a norm in moral behaviour.
Australia and New Zealand make up one of the biggest markets for Harry Potter: the books have sold a total of 5,5-million copies in the two countries. Most best-sellers are lucky to breach the 300 000 barrier in the same market.
Nathan Coombes, founder of the Australia-based Harry Potter society the Koalingo Academy, says Australia’s position as a society with British roots on the far side of the world gives the stories a particular attraction. Many of the most interesting characters are those who are least like traditional Australian stereotypes. “It would be difficult to find a Hermione Granger character among typical Aussies.”
In India, the first Harry Potter film was a smash hit. Himali Sodhi of Penguin India, which bought the Indian rights to the books, says: “They have outsold every other leading title.” But while the stories have been hugely successful among India’s urban middle class, they have hardly made an impact on the rest of the population, nearly half of whom cannot read.
At $5,20 the books are expensive by Indian standards, and some Indian booksellers suggest that the phenomenon may be tailing off. “There was a sudden spurt of interest when the film came out. But this year we have probably sold more Philip Pullman than Rowling,” says Delhi bookseller KD Singh.
Yet pirated copies of the books are now being sold by Indian street children — so Harry Potter joins an elite list that includes the work of John Grisham and Bombay’s telephone directory.
Meanwhile, the continent that invented magical realism has taken to Harry Potter with ease. The books are established bestsellers in most of Latin America. Beyond the laboured descriptions of quidditch and phonetic challenges as “Slytherin”, Latino devotees on fan websites seem notably unconcerned about the deep cultural divide separating them from their hero. There is an apparently effortless acceptance of such exotic concepts as boarding schools, and Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron (of Y Tu Mama Tambien fame) has been hired to direct the third movie episode.
The bespectacled boy wizard seems to exercise a special fascination in Norway, where one in five people went to see the first Harry Potter film. Norwegian opticians reported that the number of children queuing up for eye tests so that they could wear thick, black, Potter-style glasses was “unprecedented”. The country has also had to fend off a barrage of calls from Potter fans who want to get hold of a snowy owl like Hedwig. The owls are officially protected, but there is evidence they are being stalked. “We’ve had a lot of people, especially Germans, calling to ask if it is possible to buy a snowy owl,” said Janne Sollie, head of the Norwegian Directorate for Nature Management. —