Bookshops report brisk sales of novel linking Swire to drug trade

SALES of a novel linking Swire with the opium trade have boomed since it emerged a week ago that the company was taking the award-winning author to court.

When We Were Orphans sold out days after the Post reported that Swire was demanding the author replace the company's name with that of a fictional company, bookshops said.

Dymocks, Bookazine and Page One said they were expecting new stocks when the publisher's Hong Kong distributor - which has also run out of copies - got another delivery.

Author Kazuo Ishiguro, who won the Booker Prize for his 1989 bestseller Remains of the Day, has agreed to use another company name in future editions following action in London's High Court.

'We didn't know there was a story coming so we didn't have much stock. But we got a lot of demand that weekend - I don't know the exact number but a lot of people have been asking for it, expatriates mostly,' said Joanna Li Chung-ngor of Dymocks.

She said Dymocks' three shops, which had sold only five copies of the paperback in March and seven in April, sold 43 last month, most of them in the last week.

Bookazine said its 11 shops had sold the last of about 100 copies in stock this week, and would order more.