Salman Rushdie
In the pantheon of literature, the best novels manage to feel timeless even as they capture a snapshot of history, from Jane Austen examining Regency-era social mores in Pride and Prejudice to John Steinbeck depicting the Great Depression in The Grapes of Wrath. But writing about the present is a delicate balance — include too many gadgets, apps and cultural reference points and your story quickly feels irrelevant.
By Angshukanta Chakraborty
2017 comes bearing gifts.
At a time when the United States stands “unpresidented” and Donald Trump is unable to string a simple sentence together without committing grave factual or lexical errors, we have the return of Arundhati Roy, the novelist, and Salman Rushdie, with his grand American book about a family of Indian immigrants.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Roy and The Golden House by Rushdie are easily the most anticipated works of literary fiction to be published this year. This, at a time when literature itself is at its most disavowed, when language, under the barrage of social media, is increasingly failing to convey the shifts and churns posed by technology and politics, and the past is coagulating into imagined purity that prescribes exclusionism as the cure – is a source of hope. Read more
Source: DailyO
Penguin Random House India to publish a new novel by Salman Rushdie, The Golden House, in September 2017
Simultaneous publication: Penguin Random House India, Random House US, Jonathan Cape UK, and Penguin Random House Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
Forthcoming from Salman Rushdie is a breathtaking new novel on a sprawling canvas. A modern-day thriller, it follows a mysteriously wealthy family from Bombay that is desperately seeking to forget the tragedy they left behind as they feverishly reinvent themselves in New York City. Copiously detailed, sumptuously inventive, brimming with all the razzle-dazzle that imbues his fiction with the lush ambience of a fable, The Golden House is about where we were before 26/11, where we are today and how we got here. Here is a book that asks us – in a post-truth world – if facts and authenticity are necessarily the same thing, while never ceasing to be both resonant and entertaining.
Meru Gokhale, Editor-in-Chief, Literary Publishing, at Penguin Random House India, who acquired Indian subcontinent rights from The Wylie Agency says, “This is Salman Rushdie at his finest. The Golden House is a masterclass on the confusing world we have brought upon ourselves. The book dissects the cultural and political vacuum in which a generation – whose frame of reference for globalization has increasingly been coloured by conflict – must perform an intense balancing act. It is a terrific story, told at every step of the way with originality and nimble, impeccable plotting.”
Sir Salman Rushdie is the multi-award winning author of twelve previous novels: Midnight’s Children which won the Booker Prize (1981) and the Best of the Booker Prize (2008), Grimus, Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, Luka and the Fire of Life, The Enchantress of Florence and his recent Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. His memoir, Joseph Anton, published in 2012, became an acclaimed bestseller, praised as “the finest memoir […] in many a year” (The Washington Post). He has also published one collection of short stories, East, West, and three works of non-fiction: The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 and Step Across This Line. Rushdie has also co-edited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. His books have been translated into over forty languages. He is a former president of American PEN.
Source: Penguin India
