William Nygaard

William Nygaard ( born March 16, 1943 in Oslo) is a Norwegian publisher.

Life

Nygaard has completed a degree in economics in 1967 and was from 1974 to March 31, 2010 Managing Director of the Aschehoug Publishing House, where he followed in the footsteps of his father, Mads Wiel Nygaard and his grandfather William Martin Nygaard, the company in previous years initiated, and where it has finally inherited his son Mads Nygaard. Nygaard was also from 1987 to 1990 Chairman of the Norwegian publisher network. Since 10 June 2010, he is Chairman of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.

Nygaard has two children.

Rushdie book and assassination

On April 12, 1989, the Aschehoug publisher William Nygaard and were responsible for the publication of the Norwegian version of Salman Rushdie's controversial novel The Satanic Verses. This happened two months after Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa against Rushdie and his publishers, in which he openly called for the murder of the persons involved in the publication. As a result of the fatwa Nygaard and the translator Kari Risvik were directly threatened, and Nygaard was a while under police protection.

Despite this, he was in the Dagaliveien Street in Oslo district Vestre Aker by an unknown assailant shot at three in the morning of October 11, 1993 in front of his house times. Although the crime was never solved, most people lead the incident back to the fatwa. After several months of hospitalization, he spent most of his time in the hospital Sunnaas sykehus in Nesodden to Nygaard slowly recovered.

Memberships and Honors

Before as well as after the attack Nygaard is an outspoken advocate of freedom of speech, and is a board member of the Norwegian department of the writers' association PEN. In 1994 he was awarded the Fritt Ord Award. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature and also was a member of the Norwegian National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design.