Tributes continue to pour in for legendary literary agent Deborah Rogers, who died last week. As Vintage Publishing’s Dan Franklin told The Bookseller: “Deborah was a telephone person. She would almost always ring you, rather than send an email. ‘Well…’ she’d say, that one syllable carrying a huge freight of meaning, sometimes mischievous, sometimes concerned, sometimes excited, anxious to hear your view of one of her authors’ new manuscripts.”
Salman Rushdie broke Rogers’s heart when he dropped her for another agent and yet, recalled Franklin: “A few years later, when Salman was in hiding after The Satanic Verses had prompted the Ayatollah’s fatwa, who was the first person to offer Salman shelter? ‘Go to our house in Wales,’ she told him. ‘After all, no one will ever think of looking for you there.’ I can imagine her chuckle as she said it.”
