Cover Stories: John Calder; Ego; Xiaolu Guo

Ever since John Calder - the friend of Samuel Beckett who has published many other Nobel laureates - announced that he was to retire, speculation as to who would take over his interests has centred on Faber. So Calder's choice of Oneworld Classics, jointly owned by Alma Books and Oneworld Publications, has come out of left field. Calder's bookshop near Waterloo will also be run by Oneworld. The move is a testimony to the excellent publishing of Alma's Italian founders, Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini.

* The publishing world will have its own bean-spilling answer to Primary Colors. Ego, first in a series based around the Seven Deadly Sins, is by a twin Anonymous: a male US novelist published in close to 20 countries, and his British agent. Anon's agent Ali Gunn promises dinner at the Ivy for anyone who guesses their identities.

* Xiaolu Guo, the Hackney-based Chinese writer/film-maker picked by the The Independent as a "new talent" for 2007, has not only reached the Orange shortlist with her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. Her feature How Is Your Fish Today? has won top prize in the annual women's film festival at Créteil, Paris.

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