Ajai Singh "Sonny" Mehta is a publisher and editor-in-chief of Alfred A Knopf.

He was educated at Lawrence School, Sanawar

Lawrence School, Sanawar

The Lawrence School is situated in Sanawar, adjacent to Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh, India. It was founded by Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence of the Indian Army of British India and was established on 15 April 1847.The school has educated many notable people...

. He is referenced in the musical The Last Five Years

The Last Five Years

The Last Five Years is a one-act musical written by Jason Robert Brown. It premiered in Chicago in 2001 and was then produced off-Broadway in March 2002. Since then it has had numerous productions both in the United States and internationally....

 and is well known for moving in with Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams

Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...

 in order to make sure he finished his book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish is the fourth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" written by Douglas Adams. Its title is the message left by the dolphins when they departed Planet Earth just before it was demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, as described in The...

. He is also famous for buying and publishing Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. His works have been translated into 27 different languages. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...

's American Psycho

American Psycho

American Psycho is a psychological thriller and satirical novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by the protagonist, serial killer and Manhattan businessman Patrick Bateman. The book's graphic violence and sexual content generated a great deal of...

after Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster

Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...

 refused to publish it at the eleventh hour. He is the son in law of Biju Patnaik

Biju Patnaik

Biju Patnaik was an Indian politician. Also known as Biju Babu.Son of Lakshminarayan and Ashalata Patnaik, Bijayananda Patnaik was born in Cuttack, Orissa on March 5, 1916..-Role in Indonesian freedom struggle:Biju...

, ex-CM of Orissa, having married his daughter Gita Mehta

Gita Mehta

Gita Mehta is an Indian writer and was born in Delhi in a renowned Oriya family of freedom fighters. She is the daughter of Biju Patnaik, an Indian independence activist and a Chief Minister in post-independence Orissa. Her younger brother Naveen Patnaik is presently the Chief Minister of Orissa...

 who is also a renowned writer. He is the brother -in-law of Naveen Patnaik the three term CM of Orissa.

Mehta appears in the mostly-fictional world of Lunar Park

Lunar Park

Lunar Park is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis with elements of faux autobiography and pastiche. It was released by Knopf on August 16, 2005. It is notable for being the first book written by Ellis to use past tense narrative.-Plot summary:...

, where Bret Easton Ellis mixes fact and fiction in a pseudo-memoir.