salman rushdie essay

Always the Outsider IMAGINARY HOMELANDS Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. By Salman Rushdie. he subtitle of Imaginary Homelands -- Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 -- is perhaps too grand a term for this assemblage of Salman Rushdie's seminar papers, television broadcasts, book reviews, movie reviews, public lectures, interviews and articles. Would it have been published now -- and in its present form -- were it not for the high and terrible drama of the author's recent life? Probably not, given the scrappy and occasional nature of a considerable part of its content. Still, enough strong pieces are included to make the book welcome to anyone who has grappled -- in delight or exasperation or both -- with Mr. Rushdie's tumultuous novels or who shares his interest in the political and cultural plight of the migrant. In his view, the migrant -- whether from one country to another, from one language or culture to another or even from a traditional rural society to a modern metropolis -- is, perhaps, the central or defining figure of the twentieth century. On the complex situation of this emblematic figure, Mr. Rushdie himself can of course speak with unique authority, for he has embodied the outsider, the Other, all of his life: first as a Muslim in predominantly Hindu India, then as an Indian migrant to Pakistan, next as an Indian-Pakistani living in Britain and, since the publication of The Satanic Verses, as a blasphemer against Islam, a man in hiding, marked for murder. Mr. Rushdie does not pull his punches when it comes to the failings of his adopted land (and by extension Western Europe and the United States) in the matter of racial prejudice. Writing from the position of the British left, in a 1984 essay with the neo-Orwellian title Outside the Whale, Mr. Rushdie voices his scorn for the current nostalgia for the empire and the raj as exemplified in what he calls the.
Salman Rushdie 1947- (Full name Ahmed Salman Rushdie) Indian-born English novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, editor, children's writer, playwright, and travel writer. The following entry presents an overview of Rushdie's career through 2004. See also Salman Rushdie Criticism (Volume 23), Salman Rushdie Criticism (Volume 31), and The Moor's Last Sigh Criticism. Rushdie, a controversial and prominent author, has explored such themes as exile, cultural dislocation, and metamorphosis through his writing. Best known for The Satanic Verses (1988), he has continued to write criticism, essays, reviews, and novels that stress the importance of free speech and religious tolerance. Through a blend of magic realism and commentary on contemporary issues, Rushdie has secured a place among the most provocative of modern writers. Biographical Information Born on June 19, 1947, into a middle-class Muslim family in Bombay, Rushdie attended the Cathedral Boys' High School. His education continued in England at the Rugby School, and later at King's College, Cambridge. After earning an M.A. with honors in 1968, he acted for one year at an experimental theater, and then worked as a freelance advertising copywriter during the 1970s. His first novel, Grimus, was published in 1975, and was followed by Midnight’s Children (1981). The latter received wide critical praise and earned Rushdie the Booker McConnell Prize. Rushdie gained international notoriety in 1988 with the publication of The Satanic Verses. Devout Muslims, outraged by a perceived belittling of Islam within the novel, staged public demonstrations and placed bans on its importation. Eventually, a fatwa, or decree, was issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruholiah Khomeini, calling for the execution of Rushdie. It was not until a public pardon of sorts by the Iranian government in 1995 that Rushdie felt he could safely.
I grew up kissing books and bread. In our house, whenever anyone dropped a book or let fall a chapati or a slice, which was our word for a triangle of buttered leavened bread, the fallen object was required not only to be picked up but also kissed, by way of apology for the act of clumsy disrespect. I was as careless and butter- fingered as any child and, accordingly, during my childhood years, I kissed a large number of slices and also my fair share of books. Devout households in India often contained, and still contain, persons in the habit of kissing holy books. But we kissed everything. We kissed dictionaries and atlases. We kissed Enid Blyton novels and Superman comics. If I'd ever dropped the telephone directory I'd probably have kissed that, too. All this happened before I had ever kissed a girl. In fact it would almost be true, true enough for a fiction writer, anyhow, to say that once I started kissing girls, my activities with regard to bread and books lost some of their special excitement. But one never forgets one's first loves. Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul - what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love? It has always been a shock to me to meet people for whom books simply do not matter, and people who are scornful of the act of reading, let alone writing. It is perhaps always astonishing to learn that your beloved is not as attractive to others as she is to you. My most beloved books have been fictions, and in the last 12 months I have been obliged to accept that for many millions of human beings, these books are entirely without attraction or value. We have been witnessing an attack upon the very idea of the novel form, an attack of such bewildering ferocity that it has become necessary to restate what is most precious about the art of literature - to answer the attack, not by an attack, but by a declaration of.
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