Independent publisher, 101

NEW YORK — George Braziller, an independent and self-taught publisher for more than 50 years who supported early novels by Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller and released fiction by Nobel laureates Orhan Pamuk and Claude Simon, has died. He was 101.

A spokesman for his publishing house, George Braziller Inc., told The Associated Press that Braziller died Thursday at the Mary Manning Walsh Home in Manhattan after a brief illness. Braziller had stepped down as publisher at age 95 and turned over the company to his son, Michael Braziller.

A high school dropout endowed with lifelong curiosity, George Braziller was often likened to his good friend and fellow maverick, Barney Rosset. Both were political leftists and champions of books from overseas and both succeeded by breaking rules, although Braziller was never in Rosset’s class as a troublemaker. While Rosset went to court to fight censorship of “Tropic of Cancer” and other works, Braziller concentrated on finding quality literature.

“Take lots and lots of gambles,” an industry veteran once advised Braziller, “but small ones.”

He had been running two book clubs when he decided to become a publisher and, with his wife, Marsha, founded George Braziller Inc. in 1955. His first success was a translation of a memoir about the French conflict with Algeria, Henri Al- leg’s “La Question,” for which Jean-Paul Sartre wrote an introduction. Over the next half-century, he acquired works from all over the world, from Turkey’s Pamuk to Irish author-director Neil Jordan to New Zealand’s Janet Frame, whose memoir “An Angel at My Table” helped inspire a film of the same name by Jane Campion.

Braziller published one of the first major books on Vietnam, Dr. Ronald Glasser’s “365 Days.” And through an American expatriate living in Paris, Maria Jolas, Braziller was well connected to the French literary scene. He released translations of many of the country’s most prominent writers, including Sartre, Simon, Marguerite Duras and Nathalie Sarraute, who became one of his best friends.