Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie is an actor, born 1947.
Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay, educated in England, and made his name with a second novel that won the Booker and then won it again twice over as the best of all its winners. His subject is migration: people carrying one country inside another, and the comedy and the damage that follow. The fatwa declared against him in 1989 put him under police protection for a decade and cost his translators and publishers their safety. He kept writing through it, and he has a light comic touch that the biography tends to bury.
Movies (5)
TV (3)
Books (20)
- Quichotte (2019)
- Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (2003)
- Two years eight months and twenty-eight nights (2015)
- Luka and the Fire of Life (Khalifa Brothers #2) (2010)
- Work (2010)
- Fury (2001)
- The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999)
- Shalimar the Clown (1998)
- The Vintage Book of Indian Writing 1947-1997 (1997)
- The Enchantress of Florence (1997)
- The Moor's Last Sigh (1995)
- East, West (1994)
- Imaginary Homelands (1991)
- The General (1990)
- Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)
- The Satanic Verses (1988)
- The Jaguar Smile (1987)
- Shame (1983)
- Midnight's Children (1981)
- Grimus (1975)
Where to start with Salman Rushdie
Start with Midnight's Children, which is the book the rest of the career argues with. Haroun and the Sea of Stories is the easiest way in, written for his son and short enough to finish in an evening. The Moor's Last Sigh is the underrated one. The Satanic Verses is worth reading as a novel rather than as an incident, and Shame does Pakistan the way the first book did India.
The major novels
The books the reputation rests on. Midnight's Children is where the voice arrives fully formed, Shame does Pakistan the way that book did India, and The Moor's Last Sigh is the one his admirers push hardest on newcomers.
The lighter books
Haroun was written for his son during the worst year of his life and is the easiest way into him, an adventure story about storytelling that a child can follow. Quichotte and the Enchantress are the late playful ones.
The screen appearances
He turns up on camera more than most novelists, usually as himself and usually in on the joke. Bridget Jones and W1A are the comic cameos, and the Midnight's Children adaptation is the one he wrote the screenplay for.