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› Find signed collectible books: 'East, West: Stories'
A rickshaw driver dreams of being a Bombay movie star; Indian diplomats, who as childhood friends hatched Star Trek fantasies, must boldly go into a hidden universe of conspiracy and violence; and Hamlet's jester is caught up in murderous intrigues. In Rushdie's hybrid world, an Indian guru can be a redheaded Welshman, while Christopher Columbus is an immigrant, dreaming of Western glory. Rushdie allows himself, like his characters, to be pulled now in one direction, then in another. Yet he remains a writer who insists on our cultural complexity; who, rising beyond ideology, refuses to choose between East and West and embraces the world. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fury: A Novel'
Even before it published, Salman Rushdie's novel Fury was the subject of controversy. Holland's literary community was livid that a novel written by a non-Dutch writer was funded by their government. Rushdie watchers will spend column inches playing "spot the unmistakable biographical references": the main character Malik Solanka is a 55-year-old Indian professor; he later comes to live in England and flees to New York, leaving his wife and young son; in America, he falls for the beautiful Neela, clearly modelled on Rushdie's partner. However, tempting as it may be to focus on the circumstances of a book, rather than the text alone, ultimately it is the prose that must speak for itself.
The Fury of the title refers both to the mid-life rage of the protagonist, who finds himself standing over his sleeping wife and son armed with a kitchen knife, and the mythological furies who tore to pieces those men whom the gods had judged. As in his previous novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, he explores the relationship of the artist to his creation and to his audience. Solanka--Cambridge philosopher, doll-maker and possible serial killer--is the unlikely and unwilling creator of a pop-culture phenomenon that comes to represent everything he despises about modern cultural malaise. He is a part-creator of a culture he hardly understands--an anachronism. The novelist's prose reflects this alienation, but unfortunately with few insights or pleasures for the reader used to his contemporary mythological lyricism. Rushdie's pop references check-list the late 20th-century US from Clinton to OJ to the World Wide Web, and this, combined with their built-in obsolescence, renders Solanka/Rushdie's narrative strained. The urban culture of New York and Webspeak provide rich seams of traditional and new vocabularies and grammar for this most magpie-like of playful language lovers to line his literary nest with. However, in so doing, he cuts himself off from the emotional intensity and drive, combined with layered cultural complexity, that has distinguished his work, the most celebrated being Midnight's Children. Rushdie at his best is an intriguing writer; ultimately, it may be easier to extract him from the media circus that surrounds him than from the comparisons with his own compelling body of work. --Fiona Buckland [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ground Beneath Her Feet : A Novel'
Dieser Titel ist in englischer Sprache.
Beginnend mit dem nunmehrigen Klassiker Midnight's Children, der zum "Booker of Bookers" gewählt wurde, gefolgt von Shame, The Satanic Verses und dem triumphalen The Moor's Last Sigh, hat sich Salman Rushdie als einer der bezwingendsten Geschichtenerzähler der Gegenwartsliteratur etabliert. Alle Erzählungen von Rushdie durchläuft der Glaube, daß wir ohne die demokratische, respektlose und subversive Verspieltheit von Geschichten unseren Sinn für Menschlichkeit und Identität verlieren und in den Alptraum der Geschichte, die seine Romane so kraftvoll anklagen, versinken würden. Die Verfolgung dieses Glaubens hat natürlich eine bleibende Wirkung auf Rushdie selbst hinterlassen, angefangen mit der gewalttätigen Reaktion auf seine Anklage gegen die Politik Pakistans in Shame bis hin zur Reaktion der islamischen Fundamentalisten auf The Satanic Verses, auf die Rushdies Reaktion letztlich die zutiefst bewegende Studie der religiösen und kulturellen Toleranz in The Moor's Last Sigh war. Mit The Ground Beneath Her Feet plündert Salman Rushdie einmal mehr die Gründungsmythen und -geschichten des Ostens und des Westens, aus denen er eine erstaunliche Parabel über die Tatsache kreiert, daß -- wie der Titel andeutet -- sogar der Boden unter unseren Füßen nicht so stabil ist, wie wir zuweilen glauben möchten.
Rushdie war schon immer von der Gegenwartskultur und insbesondere vom Kino fasziniert, was am glänzendsten in Shame und in seinen Sachbüchern heraufbeschworen wurde. In The Ground Beneath Her Feet taucht Rushdie tief in die Welt des Rock'n Roll ein -- und zwar so erfolgreich, daß eines der Nebenprodukte des Romans die Verwendung von Rushdie-Texten durch die Rockband U2 war. Vina Apsara, eine amerikanische Proletin griechischer Herkunft, und Ormus Cama, der anglophile Sohn eines desillusionierten Rechtsanwaltes aus Bombay, lernen sich im Bombay der fünfziger Jahre kennen und schaffen damit eine der verwickeltsten, jedoch dauerhaftesten Rockpartnerschaften, die sich über die nächsten 40 Jahre erstrecken sollte. Mit Rushdies üblichem atemberaubenden Elan entfaltet sich die Geschichte ihrer Familien und ihrer Vergangenheit, während sich die von Umeed Merchant alias Rai geschilderte Erzählung aufbaut, seines Zeichens Fotograf und gelegentlicher Liebhaber Vinas. Er beschreibt die immer wieder aufgenommene Beziehung zwischen Vina und Ormus, während er von einem Unruheherd zum nächsten durch die Welt reist, wo er Aufruhre und Greueltaten fotografiert, bevor er das ultimativ letzte Bild von Vina schießt, die vom Erdbeben verschlungen wird. Dieses Bild eröffnet das Buch und kehrt im Verlauf des Romans immer wieder -- wie die Gitarrenriffs, die das Baby Ormus spielt, als es dem Mutterleib entsteigt.
Indem er die Mythen der klassischen Geschichte ausschlachtet, bietet der Roman eine Neufassung der Sage von Orpheus, des größten aller Musiker, und seiner verlorenen Gattin Eurydike. Übernommen aus dem alten Griechenland und auf Umwegen über Indien in die postmoderne Welt des Rock'n Roll geworfen, spinnt Rushdie daraus eine zauberhafte Erzählung über die Verschmelzung von Ost und West, im Lied wie Roman, während die Geschichte durch die Welt eilt. Von einer herrlich komischen Darstellung von London in den Swinging Sixties bis hin zum Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll im New York der Siebziger, wird Rushdies Geschichte, ehrgeiziger denn je zuvor, zusammengehalten durch das Liebesdreieck Vina, Ormus und Rai und dessen abschließende tragische Auflösung, während die Erde in einer letzten ironischen Wendung unter ihren Füßen bebt.
Mit The Ground Beneath Her Feet befindet sich Rushdie auf der Höhe seiner Schaffenskraft, mit der er Liebe, Verlust, Emigration, Vertreibung und die seismischen Auswirkungen von kulturellen Unterschieden untersucht. Wie es eines der Lieder, die Rushdie in seine Geschichte spinnt, ausdrückt: "I know it's only rock 'n' roll, but I like it." --Jerry Brotton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories'
Immediately forget any preconceptions you may have about Salman Rushdie and the controversy that has swirled around his million-dollar head. You should instead know that he is one of the best contemporary writers of fables and parables, from any culture. Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a delightful tale about a storyteller who loses his skill and a struggle against mysterious forces attempting to block the seas of inspiration from which all stories are derived. Here's a representative passage about the sources and power of inspiration:
So Iff the water genie told Haroun about the Ocean of the Stream of Stories, and even though he was full of a sense of hopelessness and failure the magic of the Ocean began to have an effect on Haroun. He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity; and Iff explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories; so that unlike a library of books, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was much more than a storeroom of yarns. It was not dead, but alive.[via]"And if you are very, very careful, or very, very highly skilled, you can dip a cup into the Ocean," Iff told Haroun, "like so," and here he produced a little golden cup from another of his waistcoat pockets, "and you can fill it with water from a single, pure Stream of Story, like so," as he did precisely that.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991'
Containing 74 essays written over the last ten years, this book covers a range of subjects including the literature of the perceived masters and of Rushdie's contemporaries, the politics of colonialism and the ironies of culture, film, politicians, the Labour Party, religious fundamentalism in America, racial prejudice and the preciousness of the imagination and of free expression. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'In Good Faith'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Is Nothing Sacred?'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Jaguar Smile : A Nicaraguan Journey'
In this timeless, haunting portrait of the people and the politics of Nicaragua, Rushdie brings to life the palpable human facts of a country in the midst of a revolution. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Midnight's Children'
Anyone who has spent time in the developing world will know that one of Bombay's claims to fame is the enormous film industry that churns out hundreds of musical fantasies each year. The other, of course, is native son Salman Rushdie--less prolific, perhaps than Bollywood, but in his own way just as fantastical. Though Rushdie's novels lack the requisite six musical numbers that punctuate every Bombay talkie, they often share basic plot points with their cinematic counterparts. Take, for example, his 1980 Booker Prize-winning Midnight's Children: two children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947--the moment at which India became an independent nation--are switched in the hospital. The infant scion of a wealthy Muslim family is sent to be raised in a Hindu tenement, while the legitimate heir to such squalor ends up establishing squatters' rights to his unlucky hospital mate's luxurious bassinet. Switched babies are standard fare for a Hindi film, and one can't help but feel that Rushdie's world-view--and certainly his sense of the fantastical--has been shaped by the films of his childhood. But whereas the movies, while entertaining, are markedly mediocre, Midnight's Children is a masterpiece, brilliant written, wildly unpredictable, hilarious and heartbreaking in equal measure.
Rushdie's narrator, Saleem Sinai, is the Hindu child raised by wealthy Muslims. Near the beginning of the novel, he informs us that he is falling apart--literally:
I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug--that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of an acceleration.In light of this unfortunate physical degeneration, Saleem has decided to write his life story, and, incidentally, that of India's, before he crumbles into "(approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious, dust." It seems that within one hour of midnight on India's independence day, 1,001 children were born. All of those children were endowed with special powers: some can travel through time, for example; one can change gender. Saleem's gift is telepathy, and it is via this power that he discovers the truth of his birth: that he is, in fact, the product of the illicit coupling of an Indian mother and an English father, and has usurped another's place. His gift also reveals the identities of all the other children and the fact that it is in his power to gather them for a "midnight parliament" to save the nation. To do so, however, would lay him open to that other child, christened Shiva, who has grown up to be a brutish killer. Saleem's dilemma plays out against the backdrop of the first years of independence: the partition of India and Pakistan, the ascendancy of "The Widow" Indira Gandhi, war, and, eventually, the imposition of martial law.
We've seen this mix of magical thinking and political reality before in the works of Günter Grass and Gabriel García Márquez. What sets Rushdie apart is his mad prose pyrotechnics, the exuberant acrobatics of rhyme and alliteration, pun, wordplay, proper and "Babu" English chasing each other across the page in a dizzying, exhilarating cataract of words. Rushdie can be laugh-out-loud funny, but make no mistake--this is an angry book, and its author's outrage lends his language wings. Midnight's Children is Salman Rushdie's irate, affectionate love song to his native land--not so different from a Bombay talkie, after all. --Alix Wilber [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Moor's Last Sigh'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Moors Last Sigh Exp a Format Bin'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Parallelville'
Salman Rushdie on Luka and the Fire of Life
Theres a line in Paul Simons song St. Judys Comet, a sort of lullaby, about his reason for writing it. "If I cant sing my boy to sleep," he sings, "it makes your famous daddy look so dumb." More than twenty years ago, when my older son Zafar said to me that I should write a book he could read, I thought about that line. Haroun and the Sea of Stories, written in 1989-90, a dark time for me, was the result. I tried to fill it with light and even to give it a happy ending. Happy endings were things I had become very interested in at the time.
When my younger son Milan read Haroun he immediately began to insist that he, too, merited a book. Luka and the Fire of Life is born of that insistence. It is not exactly a sequel to the earlier book, but it is a companion. The same family is at the heart of both books, and in both books a son must rescue a father. Beyond those similarities, however, the two books inhabit very different imaginative milieux.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories was born at a time of crisis in its authors life and the fictional Harouns quest to rescue his fathers lost storytelling skills in a world in which stories themselves are being poisoned was a fable that responded to that crisis.
Luka and the Fire of Life is a response to a different, but equally great, danger: that an older father may not live to see his son grow up. In the earlier book, it was storytelling that was being threatened; in the new one, it is the storyteller who is at risk. Once again, the book grows out of the reality of my own life, and my relationship with a very particular child. Luka is my son Milans middle name, just as Haroun is Zafars.
As well as the central theme of life and death, Luka explores in, I hope, suitably fabulous and antic fashion, things I have thought about all my life: the relationships between the world of imagination and the "real" world, between authoritarianism and liberty, between what is true and what is phony, and between ourselves and the gods that we create. Younger readers do not need to dwell on these matters. Older readers may, however, find them satisfying.
It has been my aim, in Luka as in Haroun, to write a story that demolishes the boundary between "adult" and "childrens" literature. One way I have thought about Luka and Haroun is that each of them is a message in a bottle. A child may read these books and, I hope, derive from them the pleasures and satisfactions that children seek from books. The same child may read them again when he or she is grown, and see a different book, with adult satisfactions instead of (or as well as) the earlier ones.
I dont want to end without thanking the boys for whom these books were written and who helped me in their creation with a number of invaluable editorial suggestions. Luka and the Fire of Life has been the most enjoyable writing experience Ive had since I wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories. I hope it may prove as enjoyable to read as it was to write.
(Photo © Alberto Conti)
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Salman Rushdie Airport Pack'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sameen Rushdie's Indian Cookery'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Screenplay of Midnight's Children'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Shalimar the Clown'
Los Angeles, 1991. Maximilian Ophuls is knifed to death on the doorstep of his illegitimate daughter India, slaughtered by his Kashmiri driver, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the Clown. The dead man is a World War II Resistance hero, a man of formidable intellectual ability and much erotic appeal, a former United States ambassador to India, and subsequently America's counter-terrorism chief. The murder looks at first like a political assassination but turns out to be passionately personal. This is the story of Max, his killer, and his daughter - and of a fourth character, the woman who links them all. The story of a deep love gone fatally wrong, destroyed by a shallow affair, it is an epic narrative that moves from California to France, England, and above all, Kashmir: a ruined paradise, not so much lost as smashed. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, 1947-1997'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Midnight's Children'
Before Salman Rushdie had that problem with a certain religious-political figure with a serious need to chill out, he'd already shown he was an important literary force. Quite simply, Midnight's Children is amazing--fun, beautiful, erudite, both fairy tale and political narrative told through a supernatural narrator who is caught between different worlds. Though it's a big book, with big themes of India's nationhood and of ethnic and personal identity, it's far from a dry history lesson. Rushdie tells the story in his own brand of magical realism, with a prose of lyrical, transcendent goofiness. [via]
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