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    Imaginary Homelands

    Essays and Criticism 1981-1991

    Author Salman Rushdie
    Look inside
    Paperback
    $27.00 US
    Penguin Adult HC/TR | Penguin Books
    On sale May 01, 1992 | 448 Pages | 9780140140361
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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 fifteen 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 fifteen 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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