As far as I can tell from the file downloads for December, over 5000 people downloaded the book. Many of you were kind enough to write to thank Granta, and some of you copied me. Comments include:

“I’m a 22 year old student from India and I just wanted to thank you and your
publisher for giving the ebook for free, making it more feasible for people like
me, who don’t usually have the same financial means to purchase ebooks,”

“Knowledge and awareness is the best present anyone can
receive this holidays.”

“Congratulations on this wonderful move from Granta — how fabulous of them!”

“I just wanted to thank you for offering the eBook version of Wisdom of Whores online, for free, for the month of December. People WILL want paper copies after reading it in this format…”

“I think a number of students and my mother and some others will benefit highly, and it gives those of us with paper copies the warm fuzzies toward you and Granta. And I can take your book with me every time I travel – this is a huge boon for those of us who do much of our writing in hotel rooms!”

“I realize that making an ebook available for a free download is a complicated tradeoff between mindshare and revenue for the publisher and author, and I’d like you to know that in my case, at least, I think the tradeoff worked.”

“Thank you so much for allowing us to download this book. I read the hardcover
version over a year ago, and the information I learned still informs my research
and discussion on HIV/AIDS today.”

“Your decision to make The Wisdom of Whores available in the form of e-book is much appreciated. I write from Nepal and for us first it is a challenge to get a copy, and second the price of books printed abroad is significant.”

The eBook is no longer available on this site, but you can find information about e-readers here.

I’m very grateful to my publisher, Granta, for allowing readers free access to the eBook of the Wisdom of Whores for December 2010. A little disclosure: I had a bet with Granta staff about how many people would download the eBook. The bet was made in second bottle territory so the details are hazy; one of said we expected a maximum of 15 downloads, the other did not venture beyond single figures.

As far as I can tell from the file downloads for December, over 5000 people downloaded the book. Many of you were kind enough to write to thank Granta, and some of you copied me. Comments include:

“I’m a 22 year old student from India and I just wanted to thank you and your
publisher for giving the ebook for free, making it more feasible for people like
me, who don’t usually have the same financial means to purchase ebooks,”

“Knowledge and awareness is the best present anyone can
receive this holidays.”

“Congratulations on this wonderful move from Granta — how fabulous of them!”

“I just wanted to thank you for offering the eBook version of Wisdom of Whores online, for free, for the month of December. People WILL want paper copies after reading it in this format…”

“I think a number of students and my mother and some others will benefit highly, and it gives those of us with paper copies the warm fuzzies toward you and Granta. And I can take your book with me every time I travel – this is a huge boon for those of us who do much of our writing in hotel rooms!”

“I realize that making an ebook available for a free download is a complicated tradeoff between mindshare and revenue for the publisher and author, and I’d like you to know that in my case, at least, I think the tradeoff worked.”

“Thank you so much for allowing us to download this book. I read the hardcover
version over a year ago, and the information I learned still informs my research
and discussion on HIV/AIDS today.”

“Your decision to make The Wisdom of Whores available in the form of e-book is much appreciated. I write from Nepal and for us first it is a challenge to get a copy, and second the price of books printed abroad is significant.”

The eBook is no longer available on this site, but you can find information about e-readers here.

In respect of the paperback cover pictured above which I whined about and now love, I would like to offer to Granta the nine words that are so hard to come by in the English language:

I was wrong. You were right. I am sorry.

Off-topic but on memory: 20 years ago today I was in Tiananmen Square, reporting for Reuters on the chaos that was the student movement. It was an odd time — sweaty, rank-smelling but rather jolly. Erica’s photo captures rather well the unbridled hubris and optimism of the students, right up to the last day or two of their protest. It wasn’t until the evening of June 3rd that things got really nasty. By midnight, things were nasty enough that most people, students and foreign journalists alike, had left the square. I stayed there with a colleague, Graham Earnshaw, until the tanks came in at dawn. Or at least I think I did. Graham’s memory of what happened is rather different.

When I first became aware of the difference, I got in touch with several of the old muckers who were in and around the Square with me. What if we all wrote down now what we remember of that night, then compared notes? No-one was up for it. I guess everyone was frightened about the tricks memory can play — and indeed it was that, more than the actual events in Tiananmen Square, that were the subject of the piece I wrote in Granta recently. (pdf) In the last couple of weeks, however, several of my friends and colleagues have sent me their version of events (including this nice piece from Andy Roche.)

In the intervening years, I’ve had the opportunity of working closely with the Chinese government. My colleagues in the Ministry of Health were young, dynamic, well-trained. Though many were from the post-Tiananmen generation, all were aware of what happened, and many were interested in discussing the implications two decades on. Attending mock press conferences to prepare for the release of controversial HIV estimates (inevitably and somewhat ironically, I took the role of the Rotweiler foreign correspondent) I find it hard to believe that the higher-ups could have allowed Tiananmen to happen. And I find it equally baffling that they are trying, still, to suppress discussion of events which were never a real threat to Party rule, and which in the eyes of most of the population belong to a distant past. The student leaders of yesteryear were not terribly coherent in their demands, but the central item of their agenda — corruption within the Communist Party — remains the major threat to that Party’s survival. If the old men sitting sclerotically atop the Politburo were to spend less time blocking web-sites and more time fighting corruption, they’d have little to worry about.