A Communal Event, for Everyone

Two weeks ago the Italian press wrote that a hacker had entered the publisher's computer. It named the victims of J.K Rowling's pen. Nothing was written in English to confirm or deny that my Google Alerts found. A global discretion...and a nice moment.

"Leaks appeared in a number of other countries Friday, with papers in France, Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic revealing the fate of key characters by printing a summary of the epilogue -- some of them upside-down so that unwary readers could avoid the spoiler.

The six Potter books so far released have sold 325 million copies internationally and have been translated into 64 languages, though the final tome is set to out-sell each of its predecessors."

"Hordes of would-be warlocks, sorcerers and ordinary, non-magical "Muggles" lined up outside Swiss bookstores for the English version of the new novel, which officially went on sale across Switzerland at 1am on Saturday.

Midnight parties were held at bookshops in Zurich, Basel, Interlaken, Lucerne and Lenzburg. Elsewhere many stores opened their doors early on Saturday to meet the rush of readers, both young and old.

"There's been a bigger hype than for previous books; you feel it's special. People know it's the last one and want to know what is going to happen – whether he will die," Fabienne Schaller from Basel's Bergli bookshop told swissinfo.

"Lots of Swiss people read in English and most don't want to wait until October when it comes out in German," she explained, adding that the city also has a big English-speaking expatriate community."

"BEIJING, -- Thousands of Harry Potter fans in China swarmed into book stores in Beijing on Saturday to get the seventh and final volume of the boy wizard's adventures after standing in line for several hours from the mid-night.

Chinese book stores opened their doors for sales of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" at 7:01 a.m., Beijing time, together with the world.

More than 200 books have been sold in Wangfujing Book Store within 40 minutes. The Beijing Book Building has sold 2,301 books till 6:00 p.m. Saturday, statistics show, 700 books more than the first-day sales of the sixth version.

"The previous versions did very well here, and we expect the seventh book to create a new selling record among the Harry Potter series," said Yang Xinyuan, manager of the original version books department of the Beijing Book Building."