‘Reader’s Digest’ files for bankruptcy

If this were fiction, it would be a rattling good yarn: An ailing publishing company set up with humble expectations in the aftermath of the First World War becomes a worldwide phenomenon, quickly capturing the global market for literature in a hurry.

Almost a century later, it is on its knees, a victim of technology and indifference, and it files for bankruptcy, fuelling expectations that it would soon be confined to the paper shredder of history.

But this riches to rags story has more twists than a breakdancer and, in true Hollywood fashion, it rises from the ashes. Just like Mark Twain, news of its death had been greatly exaggerated.