2024 new memoirs

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Compelling new memoirs and autobiographies to read this year

Guide to magical realism

A guide to magical realism

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Must-read books of 2024: A look back at the year’s most exciting releases

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Salman Rushdie to publish memoir KNIFE

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Where to start reading Salman Rushdie

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Books they tried to ban

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Reading guide: Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

Victory City

In its haunting, uncanny, predictive power Victory City shows once again why his work will always matter.

A novel by a man who still, in his eighth decade, derives delight in his talent and all that he can do with it. The book is a total pleasure to read, a bright burst of colour in a grey winter season.

A joyfully extravagant alternative Mahabharata... a mashup of myth and fairytale, comedy and melodrama, celebrating women's agency and the enduring power of storytelling.

Victory City is full of life and colour, and some of Rushdie's key themes: female strength, the importance of storytelling, the danger of censorship.

What of Rushdie's powers? We cannot know if they are god-given, but on the evidence of this profoundly entertaining tale... Rushdie certainly still has the gift of alchemy.

A playful, magical realist epic, full of adventure and comically clashing registers, and a celebration of the power of storytelling and the endurance of literature.

Rushdie’s sheer love of fiction is irrepressible.

One of the richest and most exuberant books Salman Rushdie has written in years... remarkable.

Rushdie's relentless creative energy pairs well with his understanding of how history works... It's as if Rushdie has dropped a molecule of divinity into a petri dish containing the other basic stuff of life, and watched a civilization cultivate.

Rushdie's lavish, playful 15th novel plants him firmly back on Indian soil, cooking up an alternative Mahabharata and spinning an elaborate founding myth from the bare bones of history. He's enjoying the enterprise and his sense of fun is infectious.

A wonderfully entertaining literary hybrid.

More than 40 years after Midnight's Children, there is still nobody who spins a yarn quite like Salman Rushdie.

An impassioned plea for pluralism and a testament to the endurance of words.

Victory City is a triumph - not because it exists, but because it is utterly enchanting. Words are the only victors... Victory City is a cheerful little vessel, despite its ultimate destination. Its myths of origin are recounted with glee... Rushdie plays adroitly with the metafictional and political implications of 'real' people and a 'real' polity being created out of imaginary backstories. One of the most charming of Rushdie's wonder tales.

Scenes of intrigue, exile, love and murder propel fast-flowing, wittily written chapters... Sir Salman may distrust all evangelists, but in this novel he shows his faith in the liberating power of art.

Victory City is Salman Rushdie at his imaginative best… sweeping the reader on a journey that feels epic in a mere 320 pages.

Salman Rushdie's exuberant writing remains a source of pleasure... A vibrant, sweeping tale with a valuable message: that stories outlast tyrants and words can be the true victory.

Victory City is epic in its sweep, exploring the futility of violence, the marginalisation of women and the resilience of great art, and it is written with a winning lightness. It is a vital and revivifying addition to Rushdie's body of work and it would be no surprise to see it in contention for major prizes later this year.

It's splendid that Salman Rushdie has a new novel out... Better still, it's a cracker.

Observer, *What You Should Be Reading in 2023*

Swiftly paced, unfussily structured, and in fluent and spirited prose, it racks the history of a magical city created by a demi-goddess.

An epic adventure-filled saga, you'll be intoxicated by its magic.

A wonderfully entertaining literary hybrid, an intimate epic, a serious comedy of manners.

A vigorous, enjoyable epic that hymns the enduring might of narrative over more fleeting forces.

This latest addition to his great body of work deserves nothing but celebration and gratitude.

A joyous masterpiece that will remind the world that, aside from being a free speech hero, he is one of the planet's greatest writers.

There is a welcome levity to his prose here as he riffs on myth-making, culture clashes or the nature of storytelling itself.

Victory City has the tone of mischief Rushdie is always able to channel into his bright, fluid storytelling. Amid all the courtly intrigue and fantastic realism woven through the extensive cast of characters, fleeting dashes of wicked humour sit up and pierce the tale delectably. Rushdie's sharp, camouflaged satire speaks to everything, from religious extremism to greed to patriarchal misogyny. It all just seems to unspool from him without effort.

The best thing Salman Rushdie has written in years... One of the richest and most exuberant books he has given us.

Rushdie's creation is vivid, compelling, and entirely his own.

Salman Rushdie is a genius and I wish he could read me a story - or a chapter of his book - every night before bed. The scale and scope of his intellect and his imagination is googolplex.

It does not resemble any other novel I could name. A major accomplishment by one of our greatest living writers.

No one, and I mean no one, can bring an entire world to life... like Salman Rushdie.

Gary Shteyngart, author of OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS

Mesmerising and soul-stirring. Victory City is an epic tribute to the power of words as well as the resilience of women. Rushdie is without a peer in proving that literature soars above tyranny and bigotry, and imagination roars louder than censorship

Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees

This is Salman Rushdie at his most virtuosic.

It will show you the adult world in a whole new light. Only a master storyteller can do that.

Jarvis Cocker, author of GOOD POP, BAD POP

A storyteller who reminds that death may take away a lot of things, but never the power of our words.

Colum McCann, author of LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN

A capacious and sweeping telling in which writing about the past is a way of also staring dead on at the present.

Natasha Trethewey, author of NATIVE GUARD

Victory City stands out as one of the year's literary highlights... that feels like an instant classic.

Bea Carvalho, Head of Fiction at Waterstones

Rushdie is an assured storyteller at the height of his powers, revealing once again how important India is as a fount of his imagination.

Victory City is one of Rushdie's very best novels. It is also a luminous, italicised, vibrant reminder of the possibilities of free expression and of the untrammelled imagination. In this instance, the medium is indeed the message.

Victory City can, in many ways, be read as an entertaining jaunt through Indian history, though it is history through the kaleidoscopic and sweeping lens of a fairy tale... this brilliantly magical tale.

This sweeping, intricately crafted fairy tale is underscored by very human characters and Rushdie's signature wit.

Culture Whisper, *Books to Look Out For 2023*

A grand entertainment, in a tale with many strands, by an ascended master of modern legends.

Rushdie's magical style unfurls wonders.

Rushdie's Victory City is another fabulous novel set in his native India... He's a master who never forgets that the main goal of a storyteller is to entertain rather than educate or pontificate.

Rushdie is, above all else...one of the most powerful defenders of story we have... Victory City is a victory for Rushdie - and for every reader who enters its gates.

Rushdie succeeds in creating a kind of incantatory prose that befits the fabulist nature of the story... he can enchant readers like few other writers.

This is a man at his full-strength, high-tar best - with his deeply humane worldview, his brilliance at set-pieces and, above all, the thrilling wildness of his imagination on irresistible display.

With its carousel of shifting politics and history, Victory City is Rushdie's most textured and triumphant wonder tale yet.

Rushdie's return to magic, myth, and India's ancient stories is dazzling. With mercurial prose and vivid renderings, Rushdie never loses us in Victory City's convolutions, but instead builds our trust to travail the many grand events of Pampa's imagined empire.

A rich, dramatic saga... The many moments of comedy...show Salman Rushdie's storytelling skills and his endearing sense of playfulness... the main feeling the reader gets is of a storyteller enjoying himself.

Rushdie is an expert at mixology; he's the DJ Shadow of text with references and allusions to high and low culture from Finnegans Wake to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... a well-told tale that gets bums on seats.

There's a magical thread of storytelling running through the veins of each character we meet in this book... a joy to read.

A work of great imagination... In Victory City the power of the written word and of the storyteller remain triumphant.

Rushdie is as impressive as ever at such traditional literary satisfactions as beautiful pacing and vivid, unforgettable characters

Salman Rushdie is the author of sixteen novels, including Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), The Satanic Verses, and Quichotte (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature and was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's last Birthday Honours list in 2022.

She will breathe a new empire into life – but all worlds can escape their creator… 
 
‘Full of adventure… A celebration of the power of storytelling’ GUARDIAN 
 
In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. 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, ‘victory city’. 
 
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 Bisnaga is no exception. 
 
‘Mesmerising’ ELIF SHAFAK, author of The Island of Missing Trees 
 
‘A total pleasure to read’ SUNDAY TIMES 
 
‘One of the planet’s greatest writers’ EVENING STANDARD 
 
‘A triumph… Enthralling’ I 
 
***A FINANCIAL TIMES AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR*** 
***A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK***

Midnight's Children

A special edition of the booker-prize winning novel

A beautiful hardback edition of a modern Indian classic and winner of 'The Best of the Booker' - the best novel from Booker Prize history. 
 
Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India's independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other 'midnight's children' all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem's story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious. 
 
'A wonderful, rich and humane novel that is safe to call a classic' Guardian 
 
VINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS: Bound to be beautiful

Essays 2003-2020

Languages of Truth

Salman Rushdie is one of the greatest writers of our age; he is a giant of literature.

Rushdie is vital, expansive, the critic as storyteller, championing his subjects with gusto... Rushdie is a still a writer to be reckoned with.

Powerful... Languages of Truth feels like essential reading in this time, reminding us that the stories we have told each other over millennia are universal, even if this shared heritage is often lost or forgotten in today's angry, fractured world.

Probably the best nonfiction he [Rushdie] has written in years... Rushdie is happy to record just what he sees and feels. You sense that he has arrived somewhere new...a sign of good things to come.

Rushdie's writing is erudite and full of sympathy, brimming with insight and wit . . . Fans will be delighted . . . [A] mesmerizing collection.

Wide-ranging nonfiction pieces by the distinguished novelist, unified by his commitment to artistic freedom and his adamant opposition to censorship in any form . . . Formidably erudite, engagingly passionate, and endlessly informative: a literary treat.

Enchanting reading... Rushdie is worth listening to.

From 'Best of the Booker' winner Salman Rushdie, an incisive and inspiring collection of non-fiction essays, criticism and speeches that takes readers on a thrilling journey through the evolution of language and culture. 
 
'One of the greatest writers of our age' Neil Gaiman 
 
Across a wide variety of subjects, Rushdie delves into the nature of storytelling as a deeply human need and what emerges is a love letter to literature itself. Throughout, he shares his personal encounters, on the page and in person, with storytellers from Shakespeare to Toni Morrison and revels in the creative lines that can join art and life. Rushdie considers, too, the nature of truth and looks afresh at migration, multiculturalism and censorship. 
 
'Essential reading... Powerful' Financial Times 
 
'Rushdie is vital, expansive, the critic as storyteller, championing his subjects with gusto' TLS

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Haroun's father is the greatest of all storytellers. His magical stories bring laughter to the sad city of Alifbay. 
 
But one day something goes wrong and his father runs out of stories to tell. 
 
Haroun is determined to return the storyteller's gift to his father. So he flies off on the back of the Hoopie bird to the Sea of Stories - and a fantastic adventure begins.

Quichotte

The epic new novel from the Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie – a playful inversion of Don Quixote set in contemporary America.

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE** 
 
**SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 
 
Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie has created a dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age. 
 
 Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television, who falls in impossible love with the TV star Salman R. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where 'Anything-Can-Happen'. Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own. 
 
 Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirise the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse, with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of his work. The fully realised lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.

Rushdie is one of the greats of his generation… But it’s rare for a writer to produce their best work towards the end of their career… Quichotte is one of the cleverest, most enjoyable metafictional capers this side of postmodernism… This novel can fly, it can float, it’s anecdotal, effervescent, charming, and a jolly good story to boot… Encore! Encore!

A brilliant, funny, world-encompassing wonder… His readers realize that they would happily follow Rushdie to the end of the world… a glimmer of hope, like an impossible dream, is left for us [in Quichotte].

A triumphant assault on the coarsened American sensibility… [A] packed, funny, melancholy, masterpiece of a novel.

A novel that is as sharp as a flick-knife and as clever as a barrel of monkeys... More than just another postmodern box of tricks, [Quichotte] is a novel that feeds the heart while it fills the mind.

Rushdie’s fans will find much to love in this hyperactive, tenchicolour satire… Many balls are juggles here, but, somehow, Rushdie keeps them all gloriously in the air.

Quichotte is cleverly plotted and compellingly paced, a constant reminder that precious few writers can manoeuvre a sentence like Rushdie, and a moving story about love and the importance of family too… In other words, Quichotte is a sort of manifesto about the power of fiction.

A fast-spinning postmodern double Catherine wheel – impossible not to be dazzled by… exhilarating.

This is the Rushdie we still need: eviscerator of the powers-that-be, who destroys rather than creates illusions... Here is a language adequate to our times.

Very much a Don Quixote for our times… a wild, enjoyable ride.

[A] modern Don Quixote... Rushdie has created something that feels wholly original even if you’ve never heard of the hopelessly romantic Spanish knight-errant who sees danger in windmills... Lucky for us, there are true storytellers and Rushdie is near the top of that list. If you haven’t read him before, this is a good book to start with—it’s fabulist and funny while revealing an awful lot about the world we live in today.

A delightful confection… Humane and humorous. Rushdie is in top form, serving up a fine piece of literary satire.

Rushdie’s Booker-longlisted fourteenth novel is certainly the work of a frisky imagination... You can’t help being charmed by Rushdie’s largesse.

[Quichotte] is Don Quixote for our time, a smart satire of every aspect of the contemporary culture. Witty, profound, tender, this love story shows a fiction master at his brilliant best.

Quichotte overwhelms you from the first page with a lightning storm of ideas and a monsoon of exuberant prose… Quichotte has all the verbal pyrotechnics and outlandish invention that will be familiar to readers of Rushdie’s fourteen previous novels, but at the heart it is a serious and affecting tale about the irresistible pull of history… those who are prepared to sit back and enjoy the ride will encounter scenery like none they have ever seen.

Nothing but extraordinary... This incisively outlandish but lyrical meditation on intolerance, TV addiction, and the opioid crisis operates on multiple planes, with razor-sharp topicality and humor, delivering a reflective examination of the plight of marginalized personhood with veritable aplomb. Highly recommended.

Quichotte is a story of breathtaking intellectual scope... Like Cervantes, Rushdie is able to balance his commentary with a voice full of tragicomic fervor, which makes the novel a thrilling adventure on a sentence-by-sentence level and another triumph for Rushdie.

Rushdie’s rambunctious latest... [is an] uproarious comedy… a brilliant rendition of the cheesy, sleazy, scary pandemonium of life in modern times.

A genre-hopping, cross-country picaresque which rips along with a great deal of wit, verve and empathy.

Rushdie's dazzling and provocative improvisation on an essential classic has powerful resonance in this time of weaponized lies and denials.

This sardonic portrait of America combines exuberant humour with sober reflections on the toxic excesses of 21st-century media.

Rushdie’s most personal novel for years… a truly imaginative response to his own experience of exile and dislocation.

Quichotte is funny… beautiful, lucid prose.

About a dozen pages into Quichotte, Salman Rushdie’s 14th novel, we read of an invention so devious, so outrageous, that it dispels any thought that the author’s imaginative powers might be waning… It’s a masterstroke in an uneven but diverting and occasionally brilliant novel… [and] a perfect fit for a moment of transcontinental derangement.

Now in his eighth decade, it is clear he [Rushdie] still possesses the linguistic energy, resourcefulness and sheer amplitude of a writer half his age – buoyant and life-enhancing qualities shared by his great Spanish predecessor [Cervantes]

Rushdie’s novel is many things beyond just a Don Quixote retelling. It’s a satire on our contemporary fake-news, post-truth, Trumpian cultural moment, where the concept of reality itself is coming apart. It’s a sci-fi novel, a spy novel, a road trip novel, a work of magical realism. It’s a climate change parable, and an immigrant story in an era of anti-immigration feeling. It’s a love story that turns into a family drama... Characters, narratives and worlds collide and come apart in spectacular fashion, while Rushdie maintains an exhilarating control over it all.

A meditation on life, death and the stories told about both.

The fiction about fiction that takes the breath away… Quichotte expertly does it again.

Funny and touching and sad and oddly vulnerable, rather like its eponymous hero… [Quichotte is] compelling.

Rushdie is a master storyteller who weaves his fictions and characters into such agreeable tapestries.

The novel's dazzling virtuosity and cascade of cultural references culminate in a final moving moment of hope

***SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019*** 
 
 
In a tour-de-force that is a modern masterpiece about the quest for love and family, Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie has created a dazzling Don Quixote for the modern age. 
 
Inspired by the Cervantes classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, a courtly, addled salesman obsessed with television, who falls in impossible love with the TV star Salman R. Together with his (imaginary) son Sancho, Quichotte sets off on a picaresque quest across America to prove worthy of her hand, gallantly braving the tragicomic perils of an age where 'Anything-Can-Happen'. Meanwhile his creator, in a midlife crisis, has equally urgent challenges of his own. 
 
Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirise the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse, with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of his work. The fully realised lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.

The Golden House

**New York Times bestseller** 
A Guardian / Observer Book of the Year 
 
One of the truly great writers of the century at the top of his game in this uncannily timely knockout of a novel.

**New York Times bestseller** 
 
 'One of the most vivid and convincing portraits of contemporary America I've read' Observer 
 
 When powerful real-estate tycoon Nero Golden immigrates to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult children assume new identities, taking 'Roman' names, and move into a grand mansion in downtown Manhattan. Arriving shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, he and his sons, each extraordinary in his own right, quickly establish themselves at the apex of New York society. 
 
 The story of the Golden family is told from the point of view of their Manhattanite neighbour and confidant, René, an aspiring filmmaker who finds in the Goldens the perfect subject. René chronicles the undoing of the house of Golden: the high life of money, of art and fashion, a sibling quarrel, an unexpected metamorphosis, the arrival of a beautiful woman, betrayal and murder, and far away, in their abandoned homeland, some decent intelligence work. 
 
 In a new world order of alternative truths, Salman Rushdie has written the ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies. A brilliant, heart-breaking realist novel that is not only uncannily prescient but shows one of the world's greatest storytellers working at the height of his powers.

It’s one of the most vivid and convincing portraits of contemporary America I’ve read.

[A] complex and witty fable … Rushdie has always been an impish myth-manipulator, refusing to accept, as in this novel, that the lives of the emperors can’t be blended with film noir, popular culture and crime caper. On the evidence of The Golden House, he is quite right.

Unruly but exuberant… Much of the success of The Golden House, in fact, lies in its humour and in the vigour of its storytelling… There is a glowing energy to the prose that makes this Rushdie’s most enjoyable, mischievous and American of novels.

Intelligent and darkly funny...with a raw political edge.

Rushdie writes with a Dickensian exuberance, always full of humour as well as striking scornful, tragic notes. Often he plays the role of satirist. His caricatures and outsize figures are full of life, wickedness and human energy: again, as in Dickens, grounded in a precise social and political scene.

Rushdie’s fable is a sprightly portrait of American life from Obama’s election to the rise of Trump.

Where Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities sent up the go-go, me-me Reagan/Bush era, Rushdie’s latest novel captures the existential uncertainties of the anxious Obama years... A sort of Great Gatsby for our time: everyone is implicated, no one is innocent, and no one comes out unscathed.

A ravishingly well-told, deeply knowledgeable, magnificently insightful, and righteously outraged epic which pos&shy;es timeless questions about the human condition... As Rushdie’s blazing tale surges toward its crescendo, life, as it always has, rises stubbornly from the ashes, as does love.

Salman Rushdie is a writer of illimitable imagination and verbal ingenuity. He grips us with wild storylines, takes us on flights of fancy, brings us back down again, enthralled and dazed… The terrorist attacks by Islamicists, the unplanned developments, the bribery and corruption and multiple tragedies are gritty, real and moving. Extreme scenes are written so beautifully I don’t think I will ever forget them… The Golden House is an extraordinary book, a brooding meditation on the personal and political, on ethics, egotism, freedom and interdependence.

This is a compelling thriller with a pinch of fantasy, populated by larger-than-life characters… This powerfully cinematic novel, enriched by references to literature, popular culture and film, is dense, detailed and rewarding, displaying one of our leading novelists at the top of his game.

For all of The Golden House’s folkloric architecture and twinkling prose, for all its impish cartoonery and exuberant storytelling, the novel is at its heart an unsettling portrait of the state of humanity in the United States of 2017. It celebrates our meager glories and exposes our flaws, particularly our inability to see outside of our own little cocoons, whether they be constructed of silk or some coarser material.

His prose is just as often a pleasure, bursting with colour and texture… The result stands as Rushdie’s most vital book in years, and perhaps the first protest novel of the Trump era.

A typically bold and all-encompassing saga.

Rushdie is, as ever, excellent in conveying bitter, personal anger.

Two decades after Rushdie transplanted himself to the US, one of the major pleasures of this novel is the way in which he considers the mores of the one per cent of the one per cent. Rushdie writes about the Goldens’ glittering, private world with innumerable perfect details, down to the art hanging on the walls… It will be a long four years, but fictional protests are unlikely to be as electric as this.

Hugely entertaining… Told against a backdrop of American politics and culture between Obama’s inauguration and the 2016 presidential election, it’s an extraordinarily powerful tale of our times.

[The Golden House] is a recognizably Rushdie novel in its playfulness, its verbal jousting, its audacious bravado, its unapologetic erudition, and its sheer, dazzling brilliance.

The Golden House is a searing examination of modern America and the world around it since 2008… Through the density of his intermingling literary references, puzzles and (deliberately) fanciful plot, comes Rushdie's true success: His great ability to capture the devilish mood of post-crash greed, political upheaval, and the rejection of the cosmopolitan, liberal west.

Rushdie’s prose is beyond much reprieve—there are few contemporary artists who come to mind that possess his ability to craft sentences. In this regard, The Golden House, his latest novel, is no exception... The Golden House is a joy to read… It’s hard to not have fun reading writing at Rushdie’s level of craftsmanship. It’s clever, intimidating, jocund, and electrifying.

The Golden House is not Brideshead or Gatsby – it is too rich and too riotous. Rather it is a modern Bonfire of the Vanities, New York seen from the inside and the outside, as only a writer of multiple selves such as Rushdie – Indian, British, now a New Yorker – could do.

Rushdie’s story is a morality tale which unfolds with great verve and erudition, missing no opportunity to pillory Donald Trump with its withering contempt.

No-one spins a yarn like Rushdie, and The Golden House’s tale of bastard sons, mysterious men and submerged pasts is hugely enjoyable… To say The Golden House is 'only' hugely enjoyable is a little like writing 'only' on a cheque for £1 million.

Salman Rushdie has garaged the magic carpets and dived deep into 21st-century America, with its concerns about identity, guns, the 1 percent and even superheroes.

**New York Times bestseller** 
A Guardian / Observer Book of the Year 
 
When powerful real-estate tycoon Nero Golden immigrates to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult children assume new identities, taking 'Roman' names, and move into a grand mansion in downtown Manhattan. Arriving shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, he and his sons, each extraordinary in his own right, quickly establish themselves at the apex of New York society. 
 
The story of the Golden family is told from the point of view of their Manhattanite neighbour and confidant, René, an aspiring filmmaker who finds in the Goldens the perfect subject. René chronicles the undoing of the house of Golden: the high life of money, of art and fashion, a sibling quarrel, an unexpected metamorphosis, the arrival of a beautiful woman, betrayal and murder, and far away, in their abandoned homeland, some decent intelligence work. 
 
Invoking literature, pop culture, and the cinema, Rushdie spins the story of the American zeitgeist over the last eight years, hitting every beat: the rise of the birther movement, the Tea Party, Gamergate and identity politics; the backlash against political correctness; the ascendency of the superhero movie, and, of course, the insurgence of a ruthlessly ambitious, narcissistic, media-savvy villain wearing make-up and with coloured hair. 
 
In a new world order of alternative truths, Salman Rushdie has written the ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies. A brilliant, heartbreaking realist novel that is not only uncannily prescient but shows one of the world’s greatest storytellers working at the height of his powers.

Salman Rushdie

It is an absolutely stunning piece of writing: the ugliest thing turned into the most beautiful. No words of mine can do it justice. But I do have to say that it’s such a profound love story, too.

Salman Rushdie’s memoir is horrific, upsetting – and a masterpiece… Knife is a tour-de-force, in which the great novelist takes his brutal near-murder and spins it into a majestic essay on art, pain and love…full of Rushdie’s wit, his wisdom, his stoicism, his optimism, his love of all culture from the so-called “high” to the so-called “low”.

Knife is a rich, immersive, feisty account of [Rushdie's] journey through darkness back to the light. Part thriller, part love story, part celebration of literature, it’s an incandescent book full of hair-raising descriptions of hard-won survival and beautiful, philosophical passages about art, freedom and resilience…Rushdie has not just enlarged literature’s capacities, he has expanded the world’s imaginative possibilities — and he has paid a tremendous price for it. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

Rushdie’s triumph is not to be other: despite his terrible injuries and the threat he still lives under, he remains incorrigibly himself, as passionate as ever about art and free speech... At one point he quotes Martin Amis: “When you publish a book, you either get away with it, or you don’t.” He has more than got away with this one. It’s scary but heartwarming, a story of hatred defeated by love.

With both candour and rich detail, and reminding us again of his knack for storytelling, Knife celebrates art and love over violence, resilience over acquiescence

Knife is a clarifying book. It reminds us of the threats the free world faces. It reminds us of the things worth fighting for. Rushdie’s friend Christopher Hitchens, in the wake of the initial fatwa, eloquently explained the stakes. The affair drew a line between “everything I hated versus everything I loved,” he wrote. “In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual and the defense of free expression.” His words apply to this book.

Although the account of his violent ordeal is dramatic…the book is also a nuanced meditation on life, death, the importance of art, and the chilling daily reality of violence... the book fulfils his aim to take charge of what happened on that terrible day and “to answer violence with art"

Rushdie has never written quite as directly as this, or emotionally. He emerges as stoic, droll, and astonishingly brave. “There are moments when these events are painful to set down,” he says. They’re painful to read, too, but necessary. As simple testimony, it makes for an incredibly compelling reading experience. The aim of the attack was ultimately to silence him. The aim failed. Salman Rushdie is a writer. The pen proved mightier than the sword after all.

Brave and compelling… Knife isn’t only Rushdie’s finest book in years, it’s also his most enjoyable

A surprisingly tender and redemptive story

Sir Salman Rushdie is a genius - only he could turn his stabbing into art... This is a brave book by a brave man. Bravo, Salman Rushdie

[A] profoundly life-affirming memoir… [but this] book should… shake us from our complacencies… [and] renew our resolve to confront and defeat the forces that led a young man to plunge a knife into an artist. Rushdie has done us a great service in writing this book. It is up to us now to heed its message

[An] extraordinary new book about the attempt on his life… People should certainly read this book… Rushdie’s light is undimmed

Salman Rushdie has turned the horrific attack on him into a masterpiece… Knife is a heroic, unflinching and immersive account of what it’s like to be on the receiving end of an attempted murder

[In Knife] Salman Rushdie remains as bold and direct as ever in defence of free speech

A searingly honest account… the power of love, resilience and his extraordinary way with words shines through. The result is a powerful and poignant read

A deeply moving account of this devastating attack and its consequences

One of the most remarkable works he has written in his fifty-year career… simultaneously harrowing and heartening… This book stands out among them [memoirs] for its combination of bravery and bravura

After reading Knife, it is impossible to feel despair. On the contrary: Rushdie’s irrepressible ebullience is an inspiration and a wake-up call… [a] magnificent book

Powerful and moving… Knife is a profound meditation on Rushdie’s life, on art, and second chances

Knife is a fascinating, challenging, and ultimately hope-filled book

[A] remarkable book… Elegantly and poignantly executed, it also brings a wry and witty touch to a horrific story. A testament to the power of literature

An astonishingly moving and defiant memoir

A visceral tale of a man on the brink of death

Good Housekeeping, *Summer Reads of 2024*

Visceral and surprisingly humorous

This erudite memoir chronicles what happened and Rushdie’s long, arduous recovery, but it’s also a love letter to literature and his wife

The Times, *Literary Non-Fiction Book of the Year*

A wonderfully idiosyncratic book, full of horrible details, yes, but also panegyric passages about his wife and funny asides about pop culture

A visceral account… Testament to his resilience and dark humour, the book finds the author reckoning with his mortality and “answer[ing] violence with art”

Knife is a moving tale with moments of powerful writing

An erudite love letter to literature and Rushdie’s wife

By turns gripping, beautiful, and rallying. Celebrating the power of art and literature, community and courage, Knife is defiant

Meditations After an Attempted Murder

On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was standing onstage in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black – black clothes, black mask – rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are. 
 
What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey of healing and recovery. This is an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again.

Salman Rushdie

Praise for Knife

It is an absolutely stunning piece of writing: the ugliest thing turned into the most beautiful. No words of mine can do it justice. But I do have to say that it’s such a profound love story, too.

Salman Rushdie’s memoir is horrific, upsetting – and a masterpiece… Knife is a tour-de-force, in which the great novelist takes his brutal near-murder and spins it into a majestic essay on art, ...

Knife is a rich, immersive, feisty account of [Rushdie's] journey through darkness back to the light. Part thriller, part love story, part celebration of literature, it’s an incandescent book full of hair- ...

It is an absolutely stunning piece of writing: the ugliest thing turned into the most beautiful. No words of mine can do it justice. But I do have to say that it’s such a profound love story, too.

Salman Rushdie’s memoir is horrific, upsetting – and a masterpiece… Knife is a tour-de-force, in which the great novelist takes his brutal near-murder and spins it into a majestic essay on art, ...

Knife is a rich, immersive, feisty account of [Rushdie's] journey through darkness back to the light. Part thriller, part love story, part celebration of literature, it’s an incandescent book full of hair- ...

It is an absolutely stunning piece of writing: the ugliest thing turned into the most beautiful. No words of mine can do it justice. But I do have to say that it’s such a profound love story, too.

Salman Rushdie’s memoir is horrific, upsetting – and a masterpiece… Knife is a tour-de-force, in which the great novelist takes his brutal near-murder and spins it into a majestic essay on art, ...

Knife is a rich, immersive, feisty account of [Rushdie's] journey through darkness back to the light. Part thriller, part love story, part celebration of literature, it’s an incandescent book full of hair- ...

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