The best way to measure Salman Rushdie’s worth as a writer is to delve into his remarkable memoirs. Joseph Anton (2012), not because it is his best work, which it probably is, but to enjoy the depth and quality of his language, his deft prose and a mastery of fiction that surprises only because he is so well known for his fantasy novels. Joseph Anton explores Rushdie’s life as a public intellectual and his courageous engagement with the political and social issues of the day. But Rushdie’s affinity for fiction still stands above all. Rushdie used “Joseph Anton” as a pseudonym while in hiding following him fatwas (death penalty) announced by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran. He took the names of two writers he admired and emulated when he began his literary journey – Joseph Conrad, who told stories about the same world Rushdie would later write about in a postcolonial way, and Anton Chekhov, master of temporality short. prose. He entrusted the story of his life to these two literary giants, a story characterized by the difficult circumstances of a decade hidden from fatwas imposed for his allegedly blasphemous book, The Satanic Verses (1988).
If you only have time to read one Rushdie book, I heartily recommend it Joseph Anton. There is much more, of course. While many download it The Satanic Verses of non-literary fame, it is stylistically and conceptually interesting for the boldness of its prose and literary vision. The novel is an excellent example of Rushdie’s characteristic flights of fancy juxtaposed with measured and restrained realism.
Rushdie’s work often explores unstable societies. His most acclaimed novel – Midnight’s Children (1981) – won the Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Booker Prize as the best novel to have won the prize in its first 25 and 40 years. The novel begins with an indelible image: a clock strikes midnight on August 15, 1947, when India and Pakistan gained independence from the British Empire. Rushdie unfolds a chilling historical frieze that explores the difficult coexistence of two nations scarred by a mournful antagonism between their main religions – Hinduism and Islam. Rushdie, who was born in Bombay into a Muslim family, is not a religious man. Secularism, civic engagement and courageous opposition to religious fanaticism would later cost him dearly.
Salman Rushdie is a powerful and prolific writer who has produced an impressive body of fiction and non-fiction. Last year he published Languages of Truth: Essays 2003-2020not long after his 2019 novel Quijotea delirious rewriting of Cervantes’ classic, Don Quixote, which explores the relationship between fantasy and reality in the technological age. A new Rushdie novel, City of Victoryexpected in February 2023. In between Midnight’s Children AND City of Victory are a number of outstanding novels – Fury (2001), Shalimar the Clown (2005), and The Witch of Florence (2008). Rushdie’s fiction is firmly rooted in various streams of fantasy literature. He has declared admiration for Gabriel García Márquez and Latin American magical realism, and the influence of One thousand and one nights is visible in The last sigh of the Moor (1995) and Harun and the sea of storiesa children’s book he wrote for his son in 1990.
Salman Rushdie’s fictional world springs from a deep understanding of literary history that is acutely reflected in the short stories of East West (1994), a book that expertly weaves together the two literary traditions alluded to in the title. His intellectual curiosity has led him to befriend extremely diverse personalities such as Edward Said, whose thesis on the end of colonialism in literature Rushdie has reflected in several works, and Thomas Pynchon, whom he met at a dinner later described it in a hilarious anecdote.
Salman Rushdie is known, loved and respected in New York City, the place he calls home. Courageous, full of energy and always politically committed, he continued to appear in public even in the most dangerous times of his life fatwas, which led him to embrace freedom of expression in literature. He co-founded the PEN World Festival of Voices in 2005 when he was president of PEN America, a nonprofit writers’ organization. The annual festival showcases international literature and young writers. Salman Rushdie’s adopted city is now anxiously awaiting news of his health following his savage attack. The India-born, UK-educated connoisseur of British and Anglo-Indian literature has had a distinguished and prolific career spanning more than 50 years unflinchingly observing the paradoxes of an ailing society. It is the society of Golden House (2017), where people live under a sinister shadow cast by the likes of Donald Trump.
