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Imaginary Homelands

Essays and Criticism 1981-1991

Author Salman Rushdie
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Paperback
$18.00 US
Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Books
On sale May 01, 1992 | 448 Pages | 978-0-14-014036-1
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“Read every page of this book; better still, re-read them. The invocation means no hardship, since every true reader must surely be captivated by Rushdie’s masterful invention and ease, the flow of wit and insight and passion. How literature of the highest order can serve the interests of our common humanity is freshly illustrated here: a defence of his past, a promise for the future, and a surrender to nobody or nothing whatever except his own all-powerful imagination.”-Michael Foot, Observer

Salman Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands is an important record of one writer’s intellectual and personal odyssey. The seventy essays collected here, written over the last ten years, cover an astonishing range of subjects –the literature of the received 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. For this paperback edition, the author has written a new essay to mark the third anniversary of the fatwa.
Imaginary HomelandsIntroduction
1
Imaginary Homelands
"Errata": Or, Unreliable Narration in Midnight's Children
The Riddle of Midnight: India, August 1987

2
Censorship
The Assassination of Indira Gandhi
Dynasty
Zia ul-Haq. 17 August 1988
Daughter of the East

3
"Commonwealth Literature" Does Not Exist
Anita Desai
Kipling
Hobson-Jobson

4
Outside the Whale
Attenborough's Gandhi
Satyajit Ray
Handsworth Songs
The Location of Brazil

5
The New Empire within Britain
An Unimportant Fire
Home Front
V. S. Naipaul
The Painter and the Pest

6
A General Election
Charter 88
On Palestinian Identity: A Conversation with Edward Said

7
Nadine Gordimer
Rian Malan
Nuruddin Farah
Kapuscinski's Angola

8
John Berger
Graham Greene
John le Carre
On Adventure
At the Adelaide Festival
Travelling with Chatwin
Chatwin's Travels
Julian Barnes
Kazuo Ishiguro

9
Michel Tournier
Italo Calvino
Stephen Hawking
Andrei Sakharov
Umberto Eco
Gunter Grass
Heinrich Boll
Siegfried Lenz
Peter Schneider
Christoph Ransmayr
Maurice Sendak and Wilhelm Grimm

10
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Mario Vargas Llosa

11
The Language of the Pack
Debrett Goes to Hollywood
E. L. Doctorow
Michael Herr: An Interview
Richard Ford
Raymond Carver
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Saul Bellow
Thomas Pynchon
Kurt Vonnegut
Grace Paley
Travels with a Golden Ass
The Divine Supermarket

12
Naipaul Among the Believers
"In God We Trust"
In Good Faith
Is Nothing Sacred?
One Thousand Days in a Balloon

© Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a former president of PEN America and the recipient of the PEN Centenary Courage Award. His books have been translated into over forty languages. In 2023, he was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year. View titles by Salman Rushdie

About

“Read every page of this book; better still, re-read them. The invocation means no hardship, since every true reader must surely be captivated by Rushdie’s masterful invention and ease, the flow of wit and insight and passion. How literature of the highest order can serve the interests of our common humanity is freshly illustrated here: a defence of his past, a promise for the future, and a surrender to nobody or nothing whatever except his own all-powerful imagination.”-Michael Foot, Observer

Salman Rushdie’s Imaginary Homelands is an important record of one writer’s intellectual and personal odyssey. The seventy essays collected here, written over the last ten years, cover an astonishing range of subjects –the literature of the received 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. For this paperback edition, the author has written a new essay to mark the third anniversary of the fatwa.

Table of Contents

Imaginary HomelandsIntroduction
1
Imaginary Homelands
"Errata": Or, Unreliable Narration in Midnight's Children
The Riddle of Midnight: India, August 1987

2
Censorship
The Assassination of Indira Gandhi
Dynasty
Zia ul-Haq. 17 August 1988
Daughter of the East

3
"Commonwealth Literature" Does Not Exist
Anita Desai
Kipling
Hobson-Jobson

4
Outside the Whale
Attenborough's Gandhi
Satyajit Ray
Handsworth Songs
The Location of Brazil

5
The New Empire within Britain
An Unimportant Fire
Home Front
V. S. Naipaul
The Painter and the Pest

6
A General Election
Charter 88
On Palestinian Identity: A Conversation with Edward Said

7
Nadine Gordimer
Rian Malan
Nuruddin Farah
Kapuscinski's Angola

8
John Berger
Graham Greene
John le Carre
On Adventure
At the Adelaide Festival
Travelling with Chatwin
Chatwin's Travels
Julian Barnes
Kazuo Ishiguro

9
Michel Tournier
Italo Calvino
Stephen Hawking
Andrei Sakharov
Umberto Eco
Gunter Grass
Heinrich Boll
Siegfried Lenz
Peter Schneider
Christoph Ransmayr
Maurice Sendak and Wilhelm Grimm

10
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Mario Vargas Llosa

11
The Language of the Pack
Debrett Goes to Hollywood
E. L. Doctorow
Michael Herr: An Interview
Richard Ford
Raymond Carver
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Philip Roth
Saul Bellow
Thomas Pynchon
Kurt Vonnegut
Grace Paley
Travels with a Golden Ass
The Divine Supermarket

12
Naipaul Among the Believers
"In God We Trust"
In Good Faith
Is Nothing Sacred?
One Thousand Days in a Balloon

Author

© Rachel Eliza Griffiths
Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a former president of PEN America and the recipient of the PEN Centenary Courage Award. His books have been translated into over forty languages. In 2023, he was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year. View titles by Salman Rushdie

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