Imaginary homelands: Essays and criticism, 1981-1991 - Hardcover

Rushdie, Salman

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 014014224X ISBN 13: 9780140142242

Publisher: Granta Books, 1991

Synopsis

A record of one writer's intellectual and personal odyssey. The 75 essays collected here, written over the last ten years, cover a 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.

About this title

About the Author

Salman Rushdie is the author of thirteen novels, one collection of short stories, three works of non-fiction, and the co-editor of The Vintage Book of Indian Writing. In 1993 Midnight's Children was judged to be the Best of the Booker, the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its forty year history. The Moor's Last Sigh won the Whitbread Prize in 1995 and the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature in 1996. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.

From Publishers Weekly

Rushdie calls his controversial novel The Satanic Verses "a migrant's-eye view of the world," and indeed the theme of cultural transplantation informs many of the 75 essays and reviews gathered in this impressive collection. Whether he is analyzing racial prejudice in Britain or surveying an India riven by fundamentalism and politics of religious hatred, he writes as an impartial observer, a citizen of the world. Subtle and witty, these concise, eloquent pieces are a pleasure to read. Rushdie's wide-ranging sympathies range from Grace Paley's stories to Thomas Pynchon's political allegories. He situates such writers as Gunter Grass, John le Carre and Mario Vargas Llosa in a political context. Along with a devastating review of the movie Gandhi and a withering portrayal of Margaret Thatcher's class-ridden, jingoist Britain, there are two resounding replies (both written last year) to critics of The Satanic Verses : Rushdie explains the book's intentions and defends the freedom of the writer.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 014014224X
• ISBN 13: 9780140142242
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448