Nationality Norwegian | Name William Nygaard Books The price of free speech | |
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Born 16 March 1943 (age 81) ( 1943-03-16 ) Occupation Chief publisher (CEO) of Aschehoug publishing house | ||
William Nygaard (born 16 March 1943) is the retired head of the Norwegian publishing company Aschehoug. He is chairman of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
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Business career
From 1974 to 2010 he was the chief publisher (CEO) of Aschehoug, Norway's second largest publishing house, which is owned by the Nygaard family. When he took this job he followed the footsteps of his father Mads Wiel Nygaard and grandfather William Martin Nygaard who was leading the company in earlier years, and the tradition continues since he left the job to his son, Mads Nygaard. William Nygaard was chairman of the Norwegian Publishers Association from 1987 to 1990.
Assassination attempt
On 12 April 1989 Aschehoug and William Nygaard were responsible for publishing the Norwegian edition of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. This was two months after Ayatollah Khomeini issued the following fatwa against Salman Rushdie and his publishers:
Owing to the fatwa, direct threats were made against William Nygaard and translator Kari Risvik, and in the resulting controversy, Nygaard was given police protection for a period.
On the morning of 11 October 1993, Nygaard was shot three times outside his home in Dagaliveien in Oslo. Although the crime has never been solved, most people — including Nygaard — link the incident to the fatwa. After several months of hospitalization, most of the time at Sunnaas Hospital, Nygaard slowly recovered.
Other positions
Both before and after the attack, William Nygaard has been an outspoken defender of free speech, and is a board member of the Norwegian division of International PEN. In 1994 he was awarded the Fritt Ord Award. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature.
He has been a member of the board of Norway's National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design. In 2010 he was elected chairman of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.
He has two children.