Pottermania: Beyond the numbers
Deepika Gurdev

I am an extraordinarily lucky person, doing what I love best in the world. — J. K. Rowling 

it sold 11.3 million copies in 24 hours in the US, the UK and Germany alone. That’s not all; the book made it to the Afghan capital Kabul, sold out in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo and flew off the bookshelves in India.

Should any of the statistics and facts about the seventh and final Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hallows, surprise you? You bet. For a very long time, we’ve heard of books being sold in the hundreds and thousands, but millions has been unheard of. Also take a step back in time. Remember circa 1997? Wasn’t there talk about the death of the book? The rise of computers, how we’ll be reading books online, publishing as we know it will be redefined?

What a difference 10 years can make. Far from dying, it wasn’t one or two million. In all, 325 million copies of the first six books in the series have sold worldwide. That’s not all, they were translated into 64 languages, reaching out to practically every market in the world. Yes, I know the cynics would argue, how many of the millions were actually read? Even if half of them did, in my book that would be more than a perfect start.

Beyond the sales and the actual reading, it has also been argued that after the initial frenzy and calculated hype, Harry Potter novels may be forgotten. Some critics have gone a step further, saying J. K. Rowling’s prose is unlikely to sustain her reputation. I balk as I disagree—I like her style; I like the spirit of adventure and the age-old battle between good versus evil. And as it has often been pointed out in the past, there’s no predictable link between prose style and longevity. What matters far more in terms of staying power of a book is the creation of a world and characters that captivate readers and linger in the their collective imagination long after they have flipped the last page. Given that the Harry Potter series has all of this, the Boy Wizard is certain to be with us for many, many years.

But what of the book you ask? I approached it with a tinge of joy, fear and sorrow. Joy to see the way the story panned out, fear because you never know what’s going to happen next and sorrow because this was it, this was closure. It’s almost like saying a final farewell to a dear friend. And to avoid the risk of giving too much away, let me say that the seventh and final book exceeds expectations. There is Rowling’s spectacular narrative, bound together through the sheer magic of her pen. Like before, what makes it truly special is her ability to create so much out of human emotions.

For some the fuss may be silly, the hype over-the-top, Potter may be not just a book but a brand. For whatever its worth, I think on the whole, the debate has been great. It has stretched people’s imaginations like never before. It has reminded us that reading books can be a seriously fun thing to do. It has taken us away from our cell phones, our X-Boxes, our computers, at least for a bit. For that and a whole lot more, I, like millions of others, shall be forever indebted to Rowling’s literary tour de force.

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