大象传媒

One of the world鈥檚 greatest novelists, Salman Rushdie has won many prestigious international literary awards and was knighted for services to literature in 2007. He won the Booker Prize in 1981 for Midnight鈥檚 Children, a novel that was also twice voted as the best of all-time Booker winners. In 1989 Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini declared that Rushdie鈥檚 fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, was blasphemous and pronounced a death sentence against its author. For over a decade he lived in hiding with close security, a period of his life that he wrote about in the 2012 memoir Joseph Anton. His most recent book Knife details the horrific stabbing he survived in 2022.

Talking to John Wilson, Salman Rushdie recalls his childhood in Bombay, and the folk tales and religious fables he grew up with. He chooses Indian independence and partition in 1947 as one of the defining moments of his creative life, a period that formed the historical backdrop to Midnight鈥檚 Children. He discusses how, having first moved to England as a schoolboy and then to New York after the fatwa, the subject of migration has recurred throughout much of his work, including The Satanic Verses. Rushdie also explains how "surrealism, fabulism and mythical storytelling鈥� are such an influence on his work, with particular reference to his 1999 novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet which was inspired by the ancient Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice. As Rushdie says, "truth in art can be arrived at through many doors鈥�.

Producer: Edwina Pitman

Archive used:

大象传媒 News, 12 Aug 2022
Newsnight, 大象传媒2, 12 Aug 2022
大象传媒 Sound archive, India: Transfer of Power, 15 August 1947
Nehru: Man of Two Worlds, 大象传媒1, 27 Feb 1962
Midnight's Children, Book at Bedtime, 大象传媒 Radio 4, 27 August 1997
Advert, Fresh Cream Cakes, 1979
大象传媒 News, 14 Feb 1989
The World At One, 大象传媒 Radio 4, 14 Feb 1989
大象传媒 News, 28 May 1989
Today, 大象传媒 Radio 4, 27 April 1990
Clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 9, episode 3