I haven’t blogged for a while. First, I was too busy finishing my book, Babel. Then, exhausted, I took a few weeks off (one of which I spent polishing up my French).
Meanwhile, good news kept coming in. I already knew that Babel was going to be published by Profile (UK), Grove Atlantic (US) and Athenaeum (Netherlands). Then three publishers who bought Lingo also decided to buy Babel: Pax (Norway), Turner (Spain) and Azbooka-Atticus (Russia). While I was very pleased by that, I was nothing short of delighted by the news that a Chinese and a Taiwanese publisher (Shanghai Dook and Faces Publishing) are going to bring out the book in two different Mandarin versions, one in simplified, the other in traditional characters.
My wife suggested it would be fun to make a map showing the countries where Babel is coming out, so here it is. May it require many updates!
Gaston Dorren, language writer 
I am so glad that the book will have chapters on Indian languages, esp. one on my mother tongue (Bengali). I am enjoying your latest book, LINGO, very much, the only problem being its loose paperback binding: all the pages are gradually getting separated one by one, right from the first day of my reading. Your language is so lucid yet interesting as well as full of humour. It’s really a great experience to know the vast diversity of the nature and form of the languages all over Europe.
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I’m sorry to hear your copy is not as solid as one would like. I’ll take it as a compliment though: ‘stuklezen’, i.e. ‘read to pieces, damage by reading’, is a Dutch word for ‘read many times with great pleasure’! Also, I hope you will enjoy my take on the Indian and other Asian languages.
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Thank you for teaching me a great word, which must be assimilated into English (as you have suggested at the end of each chapter of the your book LINGO). This word is indeed very interesting to the bibliophiles (and linguaphiles) like me.
Also, thanks a lot for correcting the typographical errors.
If you need any assistance about our languages, I will be happy. I am an editor at a textbook-publishing house, which publishes books in Bengali, Hindi and English.
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I am from Kolkata, India. Will I get your upcoming book BABEL in India?
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I expect the British edition will be available in India. Moreover, the e-book should be available worldwide (though I don’t know when exactly that will be published). There is, of course, a chapter about Bengali in the book (as well as Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi and Tamil). I would be delighted for Babel to be translated into any of the South Asian languages, but I guess that’s a slim chance, given the widespread bilingualism in the region.
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congrats!
On Mon, Aug 13, 2018 at 7:39 AM, Gaston Dorren, language writer wrote:
> Gaston posted: “I haven’t blogged for a while. First, I was too busy > finishing my book, Babel. Then, exhausted, I took a few weeks off (one of > which I spent polishing up my French). Meanwhile, good news kept coming in. > I already knew that Babel was going to be published” >
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