Salman Rushdie
Wednesday 16 April 2008 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
Philip Dodd talks to Salman Rushdie at length about the consolations of fiction, his attitude to religion, the burden of unwanted celebrity and writing about women.
Salman Rushdie
Salman Rushdie
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Philip Dodd talks to Salman Rushdie at length about the consolations of fiction, his attitude to religion, the burden of unwanted celebrity and writing about women.
There can be few, if any, living writers who are as well known as Salman Rushdie. He began quietly and traditionally enough nearly thirty years ago with Grimus, a novel which like many first books defied categorisation; he was catapulted to fame by the success of Midnight's Children and its successor, Shame; and then achieved a terrifying notoriety in 1988 with the publication of The Satanic Verses - a novel which prompted the Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Khomeni, to call for his death for blasphemy.
He has produced five novels since then including his latest - The Enchantress of Florence - which abandons the magical realism of his early work for a mischievous and masterly variation on historical romance.
The Entrantress of Florence is published by Jonathan Cape.
