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Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
“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 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.
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.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
113 people are currently reading
2,206 people want to read
About the author
Salman Rushdie
159books12.6kfollowersSir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2023.
Rushdie's personal life, including his five marriages and four divorces, has attracted notable media attention and controversies, particularly during his marriage to actress Padma Lakshmi.
After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2023.
Rushdie's personal life, including his five marriages and four divorces, has attracted notable media attention and controversies, particularly during his marriage to actress Padma Lakshmi.
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April 18, 2018
Rushdie is a great writer to study due to the controversy that surrounds his work. How many writers can say they went into hiding because of public death threats? Not many.
Some believe that he wrote The Satanic Verses for attention and more fame. Some believe that he purposefully, and maliciously, slandered Islam so his book would sell. I don’t believe that. His work was taken the wrong way. Rushdie meant no harm. He just had a story to tell and perhaps the world (or at least part of it) was not quite ready for it.
What I’ve noticed with Rushdie is how he tries so very, very, hard to make his books relevant. He addresses current affairs and problems over identity in a world that is becoming globalised. As harsh as it may sound, I believe as he has got older he has become less relevant. His newer books don’t sell anymore and his words do not carry the power they once did. Perhaps he used up his creative spark too early or perhaps he simply grew tired. Whatever the case may be, the Rushdie that writes today is not as good as the one who was active in the eighties.
Here are essays and criticisms that he wrote on all manner of things when he was at his peak. He comments on his own novels, on the politics and religions of India along with stating his opinion regarding other writers such as Ishiguro and Marquez. There are some real juicy pieces. I always find it a little inspiring hearing how a man (who is already a great writer at this point) engages with other writes that the reading public also admire (that I admire). There was a little piece on Stephen Hawking too, which shows how beneficial it is for a writer to read widely. A Brief History of Time clearly influenced Rushdie intellectually.
This will be of great interest to those who are studying Rushdie or perhaps wish to write on him, like I was, though for those looking for a more engaging read I recommend Joseph Anton. It’s his autobiography and it reveals much about his creative process as a writer. I’ll be reviewing that one soon too. For the right reader though, there is some great bits in here.
Some believe that he wrote The Satanic Verses for attention and more fame. Some believe that he purposefully, and maliciously, slandered Islam so his book would sell. I don’t believe that. His work was taken the wrong way. Rushdie meant no harm. He just had a story to tell and perhaps the world (or at least part of it) was not quite ready for it.
What I’ve noticed with Rushdie is how he tries so very, very, hard to make his books relevant. He addresses current affairs and problems over identity in a world that is becoming globalised. As harsh as it may sound, I believe as he has got older he has become less relevant. His newer books don’t sell anymore and his words do not carry the power they once did. Perhaps he used up his creative spark too early or perhaps he simply grew tired. Whatever the case may be, the Rushdie that writes today is not as good as the one who was active in the eighties.
Here are essays and criticisms that he wrote on all manner of things when he was at his peak. He comments on his own novels, on the politics and religions of India along with stating his opinion regarding other writers such as Ishiguro and Marquez. There are some real juicy pieces. I always find it a little inspiring hearing how a man (who is already a great writer at this point) engages with other writes that the reading public also admire (that I admire). There was a little piece on Stephen Hawking too, which shows how beneficial it is for a writer to read widely. A Brief History of Time clearly influenced Rushdie intellectually.
This will be of great interest to those who are studying Rushdie or perhaps wish to write on him, like I was, though for those looking for a more engaging read I recommend Joseph Anton. It’s his autobiography and it reveals much about his creative process as a writer. I’ll be reviewing that one soon too. For the right reader though, there is some great bits in here.
April 5, 2024
In the wild haze that was my Rushdie obsession at the beginning of last and the start of this year, I ploughed through this man's entire collected nonfiction. I read his three essay collections in reverse order, which means I started with the most recent and worked my way back to 1981. So Imaginary Homelands, which collects Rushdie's nonfiction from 1981 to 1991, was the last collection that I read. And I loved it a lot. What Rushdie has to say about literature and politics resonates with me on a deep level. Languages of Truth (2003-2020) is still my favorite of the bunch (it will forever hold a special place in my heart) but Imaginary Homelands is super solid as well, highly recommend.
Imaginary Homelands is sorted into 12 sections that each have a distinct focus, e.g. Rushdie looking back at his debut novel Midnight's Children (Section 1), or strong opinion pieces on Indian and Pakistani politics (Section 2) and on the lived realities of migrants living in Britain (Section 5). This book also features some pieces on films and television (Section 4), but the biggest part is taken up by various essays on literature. Essays on writers from Africa (Gordimer, Malan, Farah), Britain (Ishiguro, Barnes, Greene, a.o.), Europe (Calvino, Eco, Grass, a.o.), South America (Márquez, Llosa) and the United States (Roth, Singer, Vonnegut, a.o.) each get their own section. The book closes with some of Rushdie's strongest writings, his initial response to the Satanic Verses fatwa is collected in four scathing essays.
In one of his most famous and controversial essays, "Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist", Rushdie argues that this kind of taxonomy, the urge to separately define writing in English coming out of former colonies (only certain colonies, mind you) serves only to "change the meaning of the far broader term 'English literature' into something far narrower, something topographical, nationalistic, possibly even racially segregationist". Yes, yes, yes. He makes clear that for him all literature written in the English language is English literature. That doesn't mean that it cannot also be Indian literature at the same time. Two things can be true at once. He puts it brilliantly: "There is no incompatibility here. If history creates complexities, let us not try to simplify them." Rushdie admits that he had to repurpose the English language to his own needs. The language went through a metamorphosis through him, and then he made it his own. He reminds us that it is important to never forget that there is a world beyond the community to which you belong, we shouldn't confine ourselves within narrowly defined cultural frontiers. He ends the essay with the most mic drop moment: "The center does not hold." Uff.
In "Errata", he shares his intention for initially writing Midnight's Children: "When I began the novel (as I've written elsewhere) my purpose was somewhat Proustian. Time and migration had placed a double filter between me and my subject, and I hoped that if I could only imagine vividly enough it might be possible to see beyond those filters, to write as if the years had not passed, as if I had never left India for the West."
"Outside the Whale" is an interesting, and yet again controversial, essay in which Rushdie reckons with the real implications of imperialism for the people of the Indian subcontinent. He writes: "Let me add only that stereotypes are easier to shrug off if yours is not the culture being stereotyped; or, at the very least, if your culture has the power to counterpunch against the stereotype." Later he states: "The modern world lacks not only hiding places, but certainties. There is no consensus about reality between, for example, the nations of the North and of the South. What President Reagan says is happening in Central America differs so radically from, say, the Sandinista version that there is almost no common ground." He ends the essay as follows: "If books and films could be made and consumed in the belly of the whale, it might be possible to consider them merely as entertainment, or even, on occasion, as art. But in our whaleless world, in this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss."
Another brilliant essay is "The New Empire Within Britain". It is scathing and direct and exactly what the British public needed to hear. Rushdie writes: "I want to suggest that racism is not a side-issue in contemporary Britain; that it's not a peripheral minority affair. I believe that Britain is undergoing a critical phase of its post-colonial period, and this crisis is not simply economic or political. It's a crisis of the whole culture, of society's entire sense of itself. And racism is only the most clearly visible part of this crisis, the tip of the kind of iceberg that sinks ships." "British thought, British society, has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism. It's still there, breeding lice and vermin, waiting for unscrupulous people to exploit it for their own ends." "The fact remains that every major institution in this country is permeated by racial prejudice to some degree, and the unwillingness of the white majority to recognize this is the main reason why it can remain the case." It's just banger after banger, really. I literally have nothing to add. "You talk about the Race Problem, the Immigration Problem, all sorts of problems. If you are liberal, you say that black people have problems. If you aren't, you say they are the problem. But the members of the new colony have only one real problem, and that problem is white people. British racism, of course, is not our problem. It's yours. We simply suffer from the effects of your problem. And until you, the whites, see that the issue is not integration, or harmony, or multicultrualism, or immigration, but simply the business of facing up to and eradication the prejudices within almost all of you, the citizens of your new, and last, Empire will be obliged to struggle against you. You could say that we are required to embark on a new freedom movement."
I won't be quoting as extensively from his essays on the works of other writers because I mainly took so many new book recommendations from him but I want to highlight his brilliant essays on Günter Grass ("There are books that open doors for their readers, doors in the head, doors whose existence they had not previously suspected."), Heinrich Böll ("It’s always easier to condemn than to understand.") and Ransmayr ("Metamorphosis, the knowledge that nothing holds its form, is the driving force of art."). Especially the final quote of the Ransmayr essay � "Art can look after itself. Artists, even the highest and finest of all, can be crushed effortlessly at any old tyrant’s whim." � had me almost in tears, it so depressingly prophetic.
And so, then we move along to the 12th and final section and Rushdie just gets to unload all his disgust and disappointment after the Satanic Verses fatwa. This section is hard to read but, my God, it's brilliant. The two standout essays are "In God We Trust", in which he writes: "We now know the ever-expanding cake to be a myth. […] The representative figure of American individualism is no longer that log-cabin-to-White-House President, but rather a lone man with a gun, seeking vengeance against a world that will not conform to his own sense of what has worth.", and "In Good Faith", in which he states that he wrote The Satanic Verses under the assumption that he was a free man. He's exasperated: "He did it on purpose is one of the strangest accusations ever levelled at a writer. Of course I did it on purpose. The question is, and it is what I have tried to answer: what is the ‘it� that I did? �" "I feel as if I have been plunged, like Alice, into the world beyond the looking-glass, where nonsense is the only available sense. And I wonder if I'll ever be able to climb back through the mirror." It's horrible to think that he was never able to do that fully, the fatwa will accompany him until the day he dies. He ends the essay with a powerful assertion: "I am a writer. I do not accept my condition. I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it."
In "Is Nothing Sacred?", he writes: "And this, finally, is why I elevate the novel above other forms, why it has always been, and remains, my first love: not only is it the art involving the least compromises, but it is also the only one that takes the ‘privileged arena� of conflicting discourses right inside our heads. The interior space of our imagination is a theatre that can never be closed down; the images created there make up a movie that can never be destroyed."
Imaginary Homelands is sorted into 12 sections that each have a distinct focus, e.g. Rushdie looking back at his debut novel Midnight's Children (Section 1), or strong opinion pieces on Indian and Pakistani politics (Section 2) and on the lived realities of migrants living in Britain (Section 5). This book also features some pieces on films and television (Section 4), but the biggest part is taken up by various essays on literature. Essays on writers from Africa (Gordimer, Malan, Farah), Britain (Ishiguro, Barnes, Greene, a.o.), Europe (Calvino, Eco, Grass, a.o.), South America (Márquez, Llosa) and the United States (Roth, Singer, Vonnegut, a.o.) each get their own section. The book closes with some of Rushdie's strongest writings, his initial response to the Satanic Verses fatwa is collected in four scathing essays.
Literature is made at the frontier between the self and the world, and in the act of creation that frontier softens, becomes permeable, allows the world to flow into the artist and the artist to flow into the world. Nothing so inexact, so easily and frequently misconceived, deserves the protection of being declared sacrosanct.In the title essay, "Imaginary Homelands", Rushdie compares his work Midnight's Children to other works that draw on diaspora as a central theme. He argues that 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. He also explains the origin of the title: "It may be that writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by some sense of loss, some urge to reclaim, to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge—which gives rise to profound uncertainties—that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost; that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind." Later, he states: "It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity."
In one of his most famous and controversial essays, "Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist", Rushdie argues that this kind of taxonomy, the urge to separately define writing in English coming out of former colonies (only certain colonies, mind you) serves only to "change the meaning of the far broader term 'English literature' into something far narrower, something topographical, nationalistic, possibly even racially segregationist". Yes, yes, yes. He makes clear that for him all literature written in the English language is English literature. That doesn't mean that it cannot also be Indian literature at the same time. Two things can be true at once. He puts it brilliantly: "There is no incompatibility here. If history creates complexities, let us not try to simplify them." Rushdie admits that he had to repurpose the English language to his own needs. The language went through a metamorphosis through him, and then he made it his own. He reminds us that it is important to never forget that there is a world beyond the community to which you belong, we shouldn't confine ourselves within narrowly defined cultural frontiers. He ends the essay with the most mic drop moment: "The center does not hold." Uff.
In "Errata", he shares his intention for initially writing Midnight's Children: "When I began the novel (as I've written elsewhere) my purpose was somewhat Proustian. Time and migration had placed a double filter between me and my subject, and I hoped that if I could only imagine vividly enough it might be possible to see beyond those filters, to write as if the years had not passed, as if I had never left India for the West."
"Outside the Whale" is an interesting, and yet again controversial, essay in which Rushdie reckons with the real implications of imperialism for the people of the Indian subcontinent. He writes: "Let me add only that stereotypes are easier to shrug off if yours is not the culture being stereotyped; or, at the very least, if your culture has the power to counterpunch against the stereotype." Later he states: "The modern world lacks not only hiding places, but certainties. There is no consensus about reality between, for example, the nations of the North and of the South. What President Reagan says is happening in Central America differs so radically from, say, the Sandinista version that there is almost no common ground." He ends the essay as follows: "If books and films could be made and consumed in the belly of the whale, it might be possible to consider them merely as entertainment, or even, on occasion, as art. But in our whaleless world, in this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss."
Another brilliant essay is "The New Empire Within Britain". It is scathing and direct and exactly what the British public needed to hear. Rushdie writes: "I want to suggest that racism is not a side-issue in contemporary Britain; that it's not a peripheral minority affair. I believe that Britain is undergoing a critical phase of its post-colonial period, and this crisis is not simply economic or political. It's a crisis of the whole culture, of society's entire sense of itself. And racism is only the most clearly visible part of this crisis, the tip of the kind of iceberg that sinks ships." "British thought, British society, has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism. It's still there, breeding lice and vermin, waiting for unscrupulous people to exploit it for their own ends." "The fact remains that every major institution in this country is permeated by racial prejudice to some degree, and the unwillingness of the white majority to recognize this is the main reason why it can remain the case." It's just banger after banger, really. I literally have nothing to add. "You talk about the Race Problem, the Immigration Problem, all sorts of problems. If you are liberal, you say that black people have problems. If you aren't, you say they are the problem. But the members of the new colony have only one real problem, and that problem is white people. British racism, of course, is not our problem. It's yours. We simply suffer from the effects of your problem. And until you, the whites, see that the issue is not integration, or harmony, or multicultrualism, or immigration, but simply the business of facing up to and eradication the prejudices within almost all of you, the citizens of your new, and last, Empire will be obliged to struggle against you. You could say that we are required to embark on a new freedom movement."
I won't be quoting as extensively from his essays on the works of other writers because I mainly took so many new book recommendations from him but I want to highlight his brilliant essays on Günter Grass ("There are books that open doors for their readers, doors in the head, doors whose existence they had not previously suspected."), Heinrich Böll ("It’s always easier to condemn than to understand.") and Ransmayr ("Metamorphosis, the knowledge that nothing holds its form, is the driving force of art."). Especially the final quote of the Ransmayr essay � "Art can look after itself. Artists, even the highest and finest of all, can be crushed effortlessly at any old tyrant’s whim." � had me almost in tears, it so depressingly prophetic.
And so, then we move along to the 12th and final section and Rushdie just gets to unload all his disgust and disappointment after the Satanic Verses fatwa. This section is hard to read but, my God, it's brilliant. The two standout essays are "In God We Trust", in which he writes: "We now know the ever-expanding cake to be a myth. […] The representative figure of American individualism is no longer that log-cabin-to-White-House President, but rather a lone man with a gun, seeking vengeance against a world that will not conform to his own sense of what has worth.", and "In Good Faith", in which he states that he wrote The Satanic Verses under the assumption that he was a free man. He's exasperated: "He did it on purpose is one of the strangest accusations ever levelled at a writer. Of course I did it on purpose. The question is, and it is what I have tried to answer: what is the ‘it� that I did? �" "I feel as if I have been plunged, like Alice, into the world beyond the looking-glass, where nonsense is the only available sense. And I wonder if I'll ever be able to climb back through the mirror." It's horrible to think that he was never able to do that fully, the fatwa will accompany him until the day he dies. He ends the essay with a powerful assertion: "I am a writer. I do not accept my condition. I will strive to change it; but I inhabit it, I am trying to learn from it."
In "Is Nothing Sacred?", he writes: "And this, finally, is why I elevate the novel above other forms, why it has always been, and remains, my first love: not only is it the art involving the least compromises, but it is also the only one that takes the ‘privileged arena� of conflicting discourses right inside our heads. The interior space of our imagination is a theatre that can never be closed down; the images created there make up a movie that can never be destroyed."
May 15, 2019
Ενδιαφέρουσα επιλογή άρθρων, η οποία δεν περιορίζεται στη λογοτεχνική κριτική, αλλά επεκτείνεται και σε μια ποικιλία άλλων θεμάτων: πολιτική, ιστορία, τέχνες, πρόσωπα...
July 18, 2019
2019: Prefer his essays to his novels. Magical realism is not my cup of tea.
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2017: I haven't finished this, but I couldn't wait to post a short note. This essay collection is sublime. I highly recommend "Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist" to everyone interested in English literature. I won't say more: let Rushdie do the talking here.
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2017: I haven't finished this, but I couldn't wait to post a short note. This essay collection is sublime. I highly recommend "Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist" to everyone interested in English literature. I won't say more: let Rushdie do the talking here.
October 30, 2022
This essay collection takes you back to Rushdie’s heroic efforts to speak out in favor of freedom of speech, secularism, atheism, multiculturalism, artistic integrity, and literary and intellectual sophistication. Lots of great political and literary essays here but the most compelling relate to the Satanic Verses and surrounding controversy. Rushdie’s cosmopolitanism is a wonder to behold. So is his courage. Had he been either killed or silenced, the world would have been much the poorer for it.
August 3, 2017
“Many years ago, Kurt Vonnegut asked me if I was serious about writing. I said I was. He then said, if I remember correctly, that there was trouble ahead, that one day I would not have a book to write and I would still have to write a book.
It was a sad, and saddening remark.�
It was a sad, and saddening remark.�
April 28, 2020
Our lives teach us who we are.
Simply the best literary nonfiction book I have read till now. Every essay is an work of art ranging from an insightful critique of a contemporary author to a brilliant diagnosis of political/social crisis. The prose is witty, mordant as befits an author of his stature. Rushdie even appears to messianic in some cases and indeed some of his premonitions have already come true.
I would urge everyone to read it.
Simply the best literary nonfiction book I have read till now. Every essay is an work of art ranging from an insightful critique of a contemporary author to a brilliant diagnosis of political/social crisis. The prose is witty, mordant as befits an author of his stature. Rushdie even appears to messianic in some cases and indeed some of his premonitions have already come true.
I would urge everyone to read it.
July 27, 2019
Salman Rushdie could write about a slice of bread and make it sound interesting. This is an amazing feat, to be able to demonstrate novelty in the mundane, accomplished only by virtue of an astonishing writing talent and a fiercely thoughtful mind.
Of course when I finally read a compilation of Rushdie's essays from the eighties, this fact is propounded by manifolds. Here we have beliefs and not just make-beliefs as the author himself points out in one of his defenses of The Satanic Verses(included in this volume), as the novel is frequently aimed at achieving.
I will refrain from calling this collection eclectic because the writings have a careful pattern. Most of them are to do with identity, religion, the migrant experience. There is a section in the middle where he reviews a good number of books and their authors and ultimately finishing with the book that brought him notoriety and fame and heartbreak and affirmation.
To be honest, this is my special interest so I greatly appreciated reading the pieces on migration and identity politics. Rushdie is lucid in his identification of the dark underbelly of post colonial Britain dealing with masses of its ex colonial subjects proliferating it's social binds and embracing home the colonial subjugators who have been driven out from different corners of the world. He also ruthlessly unembellished in identifying his own integration into their white world is due to his freakish white complexion, social class and English English accent and not the famous English senses of tolerance.
It is not all anger though. He ruminates ruefully about the homeland that he and by choice all migrants leave behind. The messy ocean that he creates on the pages of his novels is the sea that was underneath his bedroom window in his childhood Bombay and it is the same sea that he carries with him wherever he goes. It is difficult to remember a more sublime description of the immigrant experience of alienation and discovery, of the power memory and perceptions.
It is important to note this volume contains four or five essays of then contemporary India and Pakistan and the volatile socio-political circumstances, the censorship and the autocratic tendencies, that perhaps contributed to people of certain aptitudes leaving their homeland. I believe these are great for contextualizing a certain period in history, especially for someone with subcontinental origins.
I have tried hard to be concise but I cannot finish without mentioning the interview with Edward Said, Rushdie's convictions on Satyajit Ray's films and their acceptability, a scathing review of VS Naipaul's among the believers (which I will read now) and a most ghastly account of a conference of Commonwealth writers, if ever there was a thing as such.
I have thoroughly enjoyed his musings on religion, the one abiding factor that he has not been blessed to escape in his lifetime, even though he is vehemently irreligious and irreverent to it.
Most of all I recommend this book because of the age old maxim, good books bring you more good books.
Of course when I finally read a compilation of Rushdie's essays from the eighties, this fact is propounded by manifolds. Here we have beliefs and not just make-beliefs as the author himself points out in one of his defenses of The Satanic Verses(included in this volume), as the novel is frequently aimed at achieving.
I will refrain from calling this collection eclectic because the writings have a careful pattern. Most of them are to do with identity, religion, the migrant experience. There is a section in the middle where he reviews a good number of books and their authors and ultimately finishing with the book that brought him notoriety and fame and heartbreak and affirmation.
To be honest, this is my special interest so I greatly appreciated reading the pieces on migration and identity politics. Rushdie is lucid in his identification of the dark underbelly of post colonial Britain dealing with masses of its ex colonial subjects proliferating it's social binds and embracing home the colonial subjugators who have been driven out from different corners of the world. He also ruthlessly unembellished in identifying his own integration into their white world is due to his freakish white complexion, social class and English English accent and not the famous English senses of tolerance.
It is not all anger though. He ruminates ruefully about the homeland that he and by choice all migrants leave behind. The messy ocean that he creates on the pages of his novels is the sea that was underneath his bedroom window in his childhood Bombay and it is the same sea that he carries with him wherever he goes. It is difficult to remember a more sublime description of the immigrant experience of alienation and discovery, of the power memory and perceptions.
It is important to note this volume contains four or five essays of then contemporary India and Pakistan and the volatile socio-political circumstances, the censorship and the autocratic tendencies, that perhaps contributed to people of certain aptitudes leaving their homeland. I believe these are great for contextualizing a certain period in history, especially for someone with subcontinental origins.
I have tried hard to be concise but I cannot finish without mentioning the interview with Edward Said, Rushdie's convictions on Satyajit Ray's films and their acceptability, a scathing review of VS Naipaul's among the believers (which I will read now) and a most ghastly account of a conference of Commonwealth writers, if ever there was a thing as such.
I have thoroughly enjoyed his musings on religion, the one abiding factor that he has not been blessed to escape in his lifetime, even though he is vehemently irreligious and irreverent to it.
Most of all I recommend this book because of the age old maxim, good books bring you more good books.
July 5, 2014
In this collection of essays from the 80’s, Salman Rushdie reviews authors, past and present, and political issues, foreign and domestic. Since Rushdie is originally Indian, now British, “foreign� and “domestic� take on shifting meanings. He observes that “Commonwealth Literature� is marginalized in England, but argues that the English language in India and in other post-colonial lands has taken on a life of its own, often appropriating British values and using them to better effect than the British did.
He says that even though the British Empire is no longer, the British have reconstituted the Empire within England. Former subject peoples from India, the Caribbean, Africa and elsewhere have migrated to England, and Rushdie notes that they are treated as outsiders, even after having been in England for generations. Zadie Smith, another writer with a colonial heritage, writes about the same issues, but always with a relentlessly upbeat and striving take on them. Rushdie takes a more Olympian and pessimistic view of the same struggles.
On a completely different topic, Rushdie offers his opinion of Rudyard Kipling, which compares nicely with the opinions of Edward Said, the author of Orientalism, and of Wendy Doniger, the author of The Hindus. Edward Said argued that Kipling took for granted the colonial assumptions with regard to India, notwithstanding his obvious love for India. Doniger argued that many of the British, including Kipling, appreciated what was good about India, notwithstanding negative interactions as well.
Rushdie’s take is that there were two Kiplings, “Ruddy Baba� and “Kipling Sahib,� the bazaar boy and the colonial Brit. They battle each other, like Jekyll and Hyde, in the novel Kim, and in other stories, and sometimes Ruddy Baba prevails in spite of Kipling Sahib. This is a charming personal interpretation of the struggle of values in Kipling, and allows us to love the Ruddy Baba while questioning the Kipling Sahib.
Rushdie has obviously suffered from his treatment over The Satanic Verses (only three years past in the concluding essay). This leads him to discuss the relations among religion, politics and literature with particular insight, and to defend himself in a way which makes me want to return to the book.
His interactions with authors comparable to himself (as magical realists and as national narrators), such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Gunter Grass, are especially revealing. Rushdie always reminds me that intercultural boundaries are where the action is, whether it is in the immigrant experience or in the adjustment to changing times. Reading about making a life in a foreign land is my best guide to making my own life in an unknown future.
He says that even though the British Empire is no longer, the British have reconstituted the Empire within England. Former subject peoples from India, the Caribbean, Africa and elsewhere have migrated to England, and Rushdie notes that they are treated as outsiders, even after having been in England for generations. Zadie Smith, another writer with a colonial heritage, writes about the same issues, but always with a relentlessly upbeat and striving take on them. Rushdie takes a more Olympian and pessimistic view of the same struggles.
On a completely different topic, Rushdie offers his opinion of Rudyard Kipling, which compares nicely with the opinions of Edward Said, the author of Orientalism, and of Wendy Doniger, the author of The Hindus. Edward Said argued that Kipling took for granted the colonial assumptions with regard to India, notwithstanding his obvious love for India. Doniger argued that many of the British, including Kipling, appreciated what was good about India, notwithstanding negative interactions as well.
Rushdie’s take is that there were two Kiplings, “Ruddy Baba� and “Kipling Sahib,� the bazaar boy and the colonial Brit. They battle each other, like Jekyll and Hyde, in the novel Kim, and in other stories, and sometimes Ruddy Baba prevails in spite of Kipling Sahib. This is a charming personal interpretation of the struggle of values in Kipling, and allows us to love the Ruddy Baba while questioning the Kipling Sahib.
Rushdie has obviously suffered from his treatment over The Satanic Verses (only three years past in the concluding essay). This leads him to discuss the relations among religion, politics and literature with particular insight, and to defend himself in a way which makes me want to return to the book.
His interactions with authors comparable to himself (as magical realists and as national narrators), such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Gunter Grass, are especially revealing. Rushdie always reminds me that intercultural boundaries are where the action is, whether it is in the immigrant experience or in the adjustment to changing times. Reading about making a life in a foreign land is my best guide to making my own life in an unknown future.
December 1, 2016
I enjoy reading literary criticism from my favourite authors and this book by Rushdie was great. He is of course quite famous because of the fatwa against him following his publication of The Satanic Verses so he does talk about this but also about his diverse literary tastes. He is very erudite and fascinating to read. He talks about Indian politics and censorship and its impact on his life but also includes a treasure chest of book reviews and literary criticism on such authors (also my favourites!) as Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Italo Calvino, Thomas Pynchon, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and many more. I really loved this book of essays and found it wonderfully diverse and full of insight. I can actually thank this book for having exposed me to a few writers that I had never explored before like Vargas Llosa.
August 18, 2020
More reviewing and less polemic than the later collection. Masterful short pieces on Heinrich Boll, Graham Greene, Richard Ford and Raymond Carver. ('Carver was a great writer. Read everything Carver wrote.')
February 23, 2023
A lot easier to appreciate Rushdie’s fiction and the care that goes into it after learning the philosophy behind the man
November 25, 2017
I'll keep repeating, "for God's sake, open the universe a little more!"
Rushdie is one of his kind, as I have been knowing him long time ago :) and no more is there to be said.
Rushdie is one of his kind, as I have been knowing him long time ago :) and no more is there to be said.
August 13, 2024
His 1982 essay 'The New Empire Within Britain' is one of the best pieces I have read on racism in the UK. His idea is that British attitudes to the various peoples of the empire found a new domestic home and focus in its society and government's attitudes towards Caribbean and South Asian migrants in the post-war period.
'The Pink Conqueror crept home, shrank back on their grey island and into the narrow horizons of their pallid, drizzled streets.' - the benefit of Rushdie’s rich grasp of language crossing over into essay form.
'For the citizens of the new, imported Empire, for the colonized Asians and blacks of Britain, the police force represents that colonizing army, those regiments of occupation and control.' Home Office today.
'There were policemen at a Southall demonstration who sat in their vans, writing the letters NF in the steam of their breath on the windows.' Since then� Stephen Lawrence and Jean Charles de Menezes cases and continuous institutional racism and sexism.
'Meanwhile, the stereotyping goes on. Blacks have rhythm, Asians work hard. I've been told by Tory politicians that the Conservative Party seriously discusses the idea of wooing the Asians and leaving the Afro-Caribbeans to the Labour Party, because Asians are such good capitalists. In the new Empire, as in the old one, it seems our masters are willing to use the tried and trusted strategies of divide-and-rule.'
'And until you, the whites, see that the issue is not integration, or harmony, or multiculturalism, or immigration, but simply the business of facing up to and eradication the prejudices within almost all of you, the citizens of your new, and last, Empire will be obliged to struggle against you.'
I’d say it’s worth reading. This book has a collection of similarly interesting essays :)
'The Pink Conqueror crept home, shrank back on their grey island and into the narrow horizons of their pallid, drizzled streets.' - the benefit of Rushdie’s rich grasp of language crossing over into essay form.
'For the citizens of the new, imported Empire, for the colonized Asians and blacks of Britain, the police force represents that colonizing army, those regiments of occupation and control.' Home Office today.
'There were policemen at a Southall demonstration who sat in their vans, writing the letters NF in the steam of their breath on the windows.' Since then� Stephen Lawrence and Jean Charles de Menezes cases and continuous institutional racism and sexism.
'Meanwhile, the stereotyping goes on. Blacks have rhythm, Asians work hard. I've been told by Tory politicians that the Conservative Party seriously discusses the idea of wooing the Asians and leaving the Afro-Caribbeans to the Labour Party, because Asians are such good capitalists. In the new Empire, as in the old one, it seems our masters are willing to use the tried and trusted strategies of divide-and-rule.'
'And until you, the whites, see that the issue is not integration, or harmony, or multiculturalism, or immigration, but simply the business of facing up to and eradication the prejudices within almost all of you, the citizens of your new, and last, Empire will be obliged to struggle against you.'
I’d say it’s worth reading. This book has a collection of similarly interesting essays :)
April 10, 2013
“The word 'translation' comes, etymologically, from the Latin for 'bearing across'. Having been borne across the world, we are translated men.� Salman Rushdie compares migration to translation- some things get carried across while others are left behind. Rushdie himself has been in the unique position of forever being the migrant, a Muslim in India, an Indian in Pakistan and a brown man in Britain. All his writing is a derivative, in some form or another, of his position as a migrant. It is the gap between the carrying forward and the leaving behind that makes his writing intriguing as well as controversial.
“Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.�
Imaginary Homelands is a collection of Rushdie’s essays, seminar papers, articles, reviews published over a decade of his literary life time, 1981-1991. Like any collection of essays it is wide ranging, from the popular to the obscure. The essays deal with varying political, social and literary topics. The reaction to such a book can only be personal and subjective. It is not a story that can be discussed with some degree of detachment. Reading Imaginary Homelands is being engaged in a personal conversation by the author. Rushdie steers the conversation from within the pages while enthralling and vexing the reader in equal measure. There is a greater possibility of the reader being provoked into disagreeing with the author. Rushdie is that kind of a writer. But the greatest power of any book lies in provocation; that which leads to disagreement promotes thought...
For the full review, visit
“Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.�
Imaginary Homelands is a collection of Rushdie’s essays, seminar papers, articles, reviews published over a decade of his literary life time, 1981-1991. Like any collection of essays it is wide ranging, from the popular to the obscure. The essays deal with varying political, social and literary topics. The reaction to such a book can only be personal and subjective. It is not a story that can be discussed with some degree of detachment. Reading Imaginary Homelands is being engaged in a personal conversation by the author. Rushdie steers the conversation from within the pages while enthralling and vexing the reader in equal measure. There is a greater possibility of the reader being provoked into disagreeing with the author. Rushdie is that kind of a writer. But the greatest power of any book lies in provocation; that which leads to disagreement promotes thought...
For the full review, visit
May 1, 2022
The idea of Imaginary Homelands is that of a commentary documenting different living conditions in various parts of our world, looking at each continent from its writer's construct. 'Outside the Whale' is a brilliant complete critical essay. Occasional honest remarks in Salman Rushdie's excellent writing keep the reader interested.
For the essay refer here:
For the essay refer here:
January 17, 2008
Can somebody say, "self-absorbed"?
Salman Rushdie is the intellectual par excellence, but it seems that he strains a bit too far on this one, writing essays on everything from Edward Said to the movie Brazil to Maurice Sendak.
I liked a lot of his essays, and I think he's got an amazing, penetrating mind that is able to make perceptive and sharp commentaries on a variety of subjects, but it seems his ego outweighs his mind, and some essays just appear to be a test of how far his intellectual reach can stretch.
Salman Rushdie is the intellectual par excellence, but it seems that he strains a bit too far on this one, writing essays on everything from Edward Said to the movie Brazil to Maurice Sendak.
I liked a lot of his essays, and I think he's got an amazing, penetrating mind that is able to make perceptive and sharp commentaries on a variety of subjects, but it seems his ego outweighs his mind, and some essays just appear to be a test of how far his intellectual reach can stretch.
September 29, 2019
To be fair, I skimmed through some of the essays because I was not interested in the topics, such as essays on Bills in Parliament from the 80s, or an experience at a festival in Adelaide. It’s however staggering to see how prescient some of Rushdie’s observations on religion, racism, fundamentalism, politics, and art are, and how progressive he comes across in his essays. The hit job on John le Carre’s work also echoes with the latter’s public reaction to Rushdie’s situation following Satanic Verses. I should also look at East, West next.
March 11, 2018
IMAGINARY HOMELANDS is a collection of reviews, articles, interviews and papers written during the years 1981 to 1991. They cover a wide range of subjects, including political, social and literary topics. However, Rushdie's main concern is the cultural plight of the migrant, so there are several pieces on this subject.
Rushdie's writing is usually attractive, provocative and incisive. I love the way he writes about literature. Nevertheless, I found the three concluding pieces, published in 1990, so moving and sad, that I almost forgot how witty and passionate his writing can be. In these essays he writes eloquently about the fanatical and politically motivated reaction to THE SATANIC VERSES in parts of the Islamic world. I wasn't aware that one of the book's translators had been killed. Not to mention the attacks other translators, bookstore assistants and publishers suffered as well.
This collection celebrates literature, the imagination and the right of free expression in Rushdie's inimitable way. Some essays may be a bit dated but his insights on racial prejudice and religious fundamentalism are still worth reading.
Rushdie's writing is usually attractive, provocative and incisive. I love the way he writes about literature. Nevertheless, I found the three concluding pieces, published in 1990, so moving and sad, that I almost forgot how witty and passionate his writing can be. In these essays he writes eloquently about the fanatical and politically motivated reaction to THE SATANIC VERSES in parts of the Islamic world. I wasn't aware that one of the book's translators had been killed. Not to mention the attacks other translators, bookstore assistants and publishers suffered as well.
This collection celebrates literature, the imagination and the right of free expression in Rushdie's inimitable way. Some essays may be a bit dated but his insights on racial prejudice and religious fundamentalism are still worth reading.
October 27, 2017
The rating was more for the uneven nature of the collection which can come when compiling a decade of criticism and essays. Certainly some of the essays are gems and the entire book is well worth reading.
Read
October 12, 2024“The struggle of man against power, Milan Kundera has written, 'is the struggle of memory against forgetting.� Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory.
ATTTTEEEEE
ATTTTEEEEE
October 29, 2023
This was just what I needed. Published soon after The Satanic Verses with some fresh references to the Fatwa issued against him, this mostly finds Rushdie earlier in the decade, reviewing books and despairing of Thatcher. It's a document of its time, but it's also a thoroughly readable collection of Rushdie's wisdom and good sense as well as his love of wordplay.
March 14, 2022
"... apa yang dihasilkan oleh seorang penulis dalam sebuah kamar yang hening adalah hal yang sukar untuk dihancurkan oleh kekuasaan."
September 24, 2012
Nice to get Rushdie's intensity without the filter of fiction. He's an engaging thinker and a great writer--this collection is a great place to go if you're not up to a novel at the moment, but want a little dose of Rushdie. Liked it way better than his short fiction.
February 27, 2017
Oh boy, Rushdie can definitely write.
I must say that I am biased: Salman Rushdie has been one of my favorite authors ever since I encountered . I've always admired a person who would be willing to question everything, and hold nothing sacred. I have followed the whole controversy relatively late, as I was still too young to appreciate the things at stake when the Salman Rushdie affair exploded in the early 1990s. Anyway, I have read about it later, and since I could Rushdie as one of my favorite authors, I tend to get excited when I find my hands on a book of his.
Like this one, which is a collection of essays and criticism that were written between 1981 and 1991. He gathers together plenty of essays, grouped into 12 different topics, ranging from politics in South Asia, to authors from various parts of the world, to the Satanic Verses controversy. And perhaps the thing I appreciate the most with this book is that I can see how a brilliant mind like Rushdie's can critique a book.
The nice thing about this is that I am rather familiar with several of the authors that he critiques. It also provides me an alternative perspective on things, which is always valuable. For example, he apparently hated Umberto Eco's writings: even though I liked it, I can see why he arrived at a different conclusion than mine. The same can be said on our diverging opinions about George Orwell and Henry Miller.
Another thing I liked is that this book provided me with leads on other interesting authors to read. There are authors that I haven't encountered before, such as Italo Calvino, Nuruddin Farah, among others. And reading what Rushdie had to say about these authors made me want to bookmark it for future reading.
Anyway, there might be areas where Rushdie and I do not converge, but the important thing is that divergent ideas is okay. This is his main point especially with the Satanic Verses controversy. Censorship is a negative thing: literature is one area where we can entertain diverging ideas in the privacy of our own head. And to explicitly hinder a particular voice when that voice happens to be different from your own is not going to produce positive results. I always see this in the context of cults, after all, I escaped one. If there are things that are too sacred to question, then how do you know that your belief is indeed strong, when you are afraid to put it to the test by looking at opposing theses?
Of course I liked this book. I give it 5 out of 5 stars. It's not fiction, but it is recommended reading to get a glimpse into the mind of one of the best writers of our time.
See my other book reviews .
I must say that I am biased: Salman Rushdie has been one of my favorite authors ever since I encountered . I've always admired a person who would be willing to question everything, and hold nothing sacred. I have followed the whole controversy relatively late, as I was still too young to appreciate the things at stake when the Salman Rushdie affair exploded in the early 1990s. Anyway, I have read about it later, and since I could Rushdie as one of my favorite authors, I tend to get excited when I find my hands on a book of his.
Like this one, which is a collection of essays and criticism that were written between 1981 and 1991. He gathers together plenty of essays, grouped into 12 different topics, ranging from politics in South Asia, to authors from various parts of the world, to the Satanic Verses controversy. And perhaps the thing I appreciate the most with this book is that I can see how a brilliant mind like Rushdie's can critique a book.
The nice thing about this is that I am rather familiar with several of the authors that he critiques. It also provides me an alternative perspective on things, which is always valuable. For example, he apparently hated Umberto Eco's writings: even though I liked it, I can see why he arrived at a different conclusion than mine. The same can be said on our diverging opinions about George Orwell and Henry Miller.
Another thing I liked is that this book provided me with leads on other interesting authors to read. There are authors that I haven't encountered before, such as Italo Calvino, Nuruddin Farah, among others. And reading what Rushdie had to say about these authors made me want to bookmark it for future reading.
Anyway, there might be areas where Rushdie and I do not converge, but the important thing is that divergent ideas is okay. This is his main point especially with the Satanic Verses controversy. Censorship is a negative thing: literature is one area where we can entertain diverging ideas in the privacy of our own head. And to explicitly hinder a particular voice when that voice happens to be different from your own is not going to produce positive results. I always see this in the context of cults, after all, I escaped one. If there are things that are too sacred to question, then how do you know that your belief is indeed strong, when you are afraid to put it to the test by looking at opposing theses?
Of course I liked this book. I give it 5 out of 5 stars. It's not fiction, but it is recommended reading to get a glimpse into the mind of one of the best writers of our time.
See my other book reviews .
September 18, 2017
I am not sure when, or where, I found my copy of this book. I do not know how long it sat, ignored, on my bookshelf. What I do know is, when I needed it, it was there, and literally fell into my hands. Of course, I knew of Mr. Rushdie, but had never read anything by him. My education has begun.
Most of these 75 or so essays are short, some just a couple of pages, but all of them require thought while reading them, and several require thought after reading them; at least for me. As one reviewer noted, this is not a book to take to the gym. His insights on colonialism are fascinating. His insights on the Ghandis, Pakistan, cultures I knew little-to-nothing about were spell-binding. The articles about contemporary authors were not only interesting, but often humorous, and always enlightening.
But the articles in the last section were, for me, the most eye-opening. These were the ones where he discussed the fatwa against him, what he meant when he wrote The Satanic Verses, and the duplicity of the imams even when they agreed with him, shook his hand, said they would help reverse the fatwa, and didn't. What is a human life worth? What is a man's word worth? What is a friend worth?
The writing in these essays is often lyrical. It is always clear, and easily read and understood. I highly recommend this book for anyone with a curiosity about how our world, and those who inhabit it, think and work. Beautiful writing, and I can hardly wait for my copy of Step Across This Line... to arrive.
Most of these 75 or so essays are short, some just a couple of pages, but all of them require thought while reading them, and several require thought after reading them; at least for me. As one reviewer noted, this is not a book to take to the gym. His insights on colonialism are fascinating. His insights on the Ghandis, Pakistan, cultures I knew little-to-nothing about were spell-binding. The articles about contemporary authors were not only interesting, but often humorous, and always enlightening.
But the articles in the last section were, for me, the most eye-opening. These were the ones where he discussed the fatwa against him, what he meant when he wrote The Satanic Verses, and the duplicity of the imams even when they agreed with him, shook his hand, said they would help reverse the fatwa, and didn't. What is a human life worth? What is a man's word worth? What is a friend worth?
The writing in these essays is often lyrical. It is always clear, and easily read and understood. I highly recommend this book for anyone with a curiosity about how our world, and those who inhabit it, think and work. Beautiful writing, and I can hardly wait for my copy of Step Across This Line... to arrive.
September 20, 2017
It's an odd book, collecting much of what Rushdie wrote that wasn't fiction and wasn't already collected somewhere. So, we get some fascinating looks at politics in India during the early 80s, which made me realize how much more I have to learn about India and Pakistan in general. We get some book reviews mostly of great authors, but mostly of books that happened to be assigned to him rather than necessarily their best works. (Though I am definitely intrigued to read Italo Calvino after Rushdie's enthusiastic look at his oeuvre to that date.) We get a little bit about cinema, and a bit about America, and several references to the famous fatwah against him. The last few chapters are concerned with Rushdie's powerful beliefs concerning secularism, and the ways in which those who absorb new ideas create new things as opposed to the ways those who are convinced they have the unchanging Truth are opposing humanity's needs. And then there's a three page unconvincing conversion to Islam at the end, which I looked up and learned was only put there as an attempt to convince people to stop wanting him dead. Other than that, Rushdie's writing is superb, and his ideas generate many new thoughts in my head. I think I just bought this book because I wanted to see what he wrote about Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon, but my mind is moving in all sorts of different directions after reading it.
August 22, 2024
The essays in this collection (collection published 2010, works within published 1981-1991) are useful and interesting in the way that it is interesting to view the issues and thinking of yesteryear, to remind or educate oneself of elements of the zeitgeist that have been largely forgotten.
However, the literary criticism in Imaginary Homelands is much more voluminous. Book reviews neither attain nor acquire relevance the way social commentary can so I question the publisher's decision to collect so many of them in this volume. (I question my own decision to read through them all--admittedly with varying levels of attention.) Collected commentary is the kind of thing you might want to assemble near or after the author's death but even as a kind of retrospective, it wouldn't be very interesting. I concede that it was interesting to read Rushdie's views on books and authors with which I am already familiar (maybe 30% of them) and perhaps I will get around to reading a few of the other authors.
However, the literary criticism in Imaginary Homelands is much more voluminous. Book reviews neither attain nor acquire relevance the way social commentary can so I question the publisher's decision to collect so many of them in this volume. (I question my own decision to read through them all--admittedly with varying levels of attention.) Collected commentary is the kind of thing you might want to assemble near or after the author's death but even as a kind of retrospective, it wouldn't be very interesting. I concede that it was interesting to read Rushdie's views on books and authors with which I am already familiar (maybe 30% of them) and perhaps I will get around to reading a few of the other authors.
March 24, 2025
The book is a compilation of a number of essays previously published, mostly in the 1980s. Raised as a Moslem in India and having migrated to the UK, he acknowledges that his perspective is as a minority, a Moslem in India, within a minority, an Indian in the UK. Some of the essays are on politics at the time of their writing in India and in the UK, but most cover films and filmmakers and books and authors and of these, those I most enjoyed discussed censorship, Graham Greene, John le Carre, Bruce Chatwin, Stephen Hawking, Gunter Grass and Attenborough’s film Gandhi. However, the highlight of the book were the closing essays discussing the fatwa against him for his authorship of the Satanic Verses, his defence that the book is a work of fiction, his summary of the motif of that book and his discussion thereof with six Moslem scholars.
Of course, the writing is excellent, but the lapse of time from some of the events being analysed and his discussion of some authors not of interest to me was what prevented a rating of 5 stars.
Of course, the writing is excellent, but the lapse of time from some of the events being analysed and his discussion of some authors not of interest to me was what prevented a rating of 5 stars.
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