Where to start reading Salman Rushdie
By Vintage
Where to start reading Salman Rushdie
By Vintage
Salman Rushdie is one of the world’s most acclaimed, award-winning contemporary authors. Translated into over 40 languages, he has produced a celebrated body of work now encompassing 16 works of fiction including the brand-new Victory City; five works of non-fiction; two plays, one screenplay and two anthologies. Here is a guide for the keen-but-daunted on where to begin with Rushdie’s bibliography.
Victory City
Salman Rushdie
£22.00 £20.90She will whisper an empire into existence - but all stories have a way of getting away from their creator In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga - literally 'victory city' - the wonder of the world. Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana's life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga's as she attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and as years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, Bisnaga is no exception. 'No one, and I mean no one, can bring an entire world to life with the authority, wisdom, humor and panache of Salman Rushdie' Gary Shteyngart
Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie
£9.99 £9.49"To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world," wrote Salman Rushdie, and he proved it with his most successful novel: the story of Saleem Sinai, a man "handcuffed to history" by being born precisely at the moment of Indian independence: at midnight on 15 August, 1947. As a result, Saleem believes that all the history bubbling up through his galloping narrative – from Nehru to Indira Gandhi, from war with China to the creation of Bangladesh – happens because of him. A fairy tale, a coming-of-age story and a satire, Midnight’s Children is as "hot, noisy, odorous, crowded and excessive’ (to borrow the novel’s own words) as the country it describes, borrowing from writers like Günter Grass and Gabriel García Márquez but creating something entirely new. It reclaimed English literature in India from its colonial past and created a new strain of fiction as, in Anita Desai’s words, younger writers "rushed to produce their imitations". In the 40 years since it was published, this funny, ambitious, mind-stretching novel has continued to be both a critical hit and a popular favourite, winning the Booker Prize in 1981 and then topping the poll for the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and the Best of the Booker in 2008 – making it the only book to have won the prize three times.
The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie
£10.99 £10.44Just before dawn one winter’s morning, an aeroplane blows apart high above the English Channel and two figures tumble, clutched in an embrace, towards the sea: Gibreel Farishta, India’s legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices. Washed up, alive, on an English beach, their survival is a miracle. But there is a price to pay. Gibreel and Saladin have been chosen as opponents in the eternal wrestling match between Good and Evil. But chosen by whom? Who is which? And what will be the outcome of their final confrontation? Rushdie’s fourth novel, The Satanic Verses became the subject of religious controversy. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and, a year after its publication, Iran’s Supreme Leader issued a fatwa that forced Rushdie into hiding for nine years. It was during this time that he became a passionate advocate for freedom of speech and a strong supporter of PEN, the charity that promotes literature and freedom of expression.
Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
Salman Rushdie
£12.99 £12.34"The migrant," wrote Rushdie in this first of his three collections of short non-fiction, "is, perhaps, the central or defining figure of the Twentieth Century." Many of the issues he raises in these essays – racism, the legacy of the British Empire – remain vital today. This is also a book of appreciation for other authors, those whose own works inspired Rushdie to "Go for broke. Always try to do too much. Aim for the stars. Keep grinning." Here we see a great writer respond with his trademark ebullience and wit to others, both his contemporaries (Julian Barnes is "frequently brilliant, funny, thoughtful, inventive, daring, iconoclastic, original, and a delight to read") and his influences: reading Italo Calvino, Rushdie can "think of no finer writer to have beside me while Italy explodes, while Britain burns, while the world ends".
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
Salman Rushdie
£7.99 £7.59A children’s story, dedicated to his son Zafar: "As I wander far from view / Read, and bring me home to you". A fable set in "a city so ruinously sad it had forgotten its name", the book introduces Haroun, who sets off to find new tales for his storyteller father, who has run out of stories and fallen silent. Along the way, Haroun introduces English readers to evocative names like the villain Khattam-Shud (Hindustani for ‘over and done with’), and Rushdie’s playful style produces coinages including the ever-useful ‘P2C2E’ (a process too complicated to explain). But Haroun and the Sea of Stories is not just for children. Drawing inspiration from crossover stories such as The Wizard of Oz and The Phantom Tollbooth, this lively story speaks of the danger of silence to storytellers everywhere.
Shalimar the Clown
Salman Rushdie
£9.99 £9.49Kashmir – the disputed territory between Pakistan and India – was, decades ago, a jagged line, meaning simply border conflict. Rushdie rejects that simplistic definition of a place "like paradise" with this story of a boy who runs away from the circus and becomes a killer. Shalimar, at the beginning of the book, murders Max Ophuls, the Jewish former US ambassador to India, and the story runs backwards and forwards through time to places as far apart as wartime France and Taliban-era Afghanistan. Shalimar the Clown is a torrent of brilliance: it holds satire alongside perfect character sketches, and can switch from outright comedy to sickening horror with a nimbleness that makes Goodfellas look like Toy Story. The final third is a breathlessly compelling thriller.
Quichotte
Salman Rushdie
£9.99 £9.49Quichotte was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and showed that, more than forty years into his career, he was still writing with all the energy, imagination and humour that made him famous. Using Don Quixote as a springboard, Rushdie gives us a story within a story within a story – Rushdie squared, fiction cubed, satire to the power of satire. It’s about a road trip across Trump’s USA, a world of opioid addiction and screen burnout; but a love story too, about a man who will move heaven and earth to win over a TV star. Echoes of Cervantes’s classic abound, but above all this book is a love letter to Rushdie’s own omnivorous knowledge of – and love for – modern culture, from Oprah, Vonnegut and Cornershop to Pinocchio, Law & Order and The Real Housewives of Atlanta. Above all, as one character puts it, it’s "colour after a lifetime of black and white".
Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020
Salman Rushdie
£20.00This collection of Rushdie’s incisive and inspiring essays, criticism and speeches takes readers on a thrilling journey. The book chronicles a time of momentous cultural shifts, and its subjects are hugely varied, ranging from literature and art to politics and human rights, with scintillating essays about Shakespeare, Ai Weiwei, Cervantes, truth, courage, liberty – and even Carrie Fisher and Christmas! In a number of these essays, Rushdie delves into storytelling itself. What emerges is a love letter to literature and a compelling argument for freedom of speech.