Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991

A collection of 75 essays that illuminate the culture of his times, and of ours.

Drawing from two political and several literary homelands, this collection presents a remarkable series of trenchant essays, demonstrating the full range and force of Salman Rushdie’s remarkable imaginative and observational powers.

With candour, eloquence and indignation he carefully examines an expanse of topics; including the politics of India and Pakistan, censorship, the Labour Party, Palestinian identity, contemporary film and late-twentieth century race, religion and politics. Elsewhere he trains his eye on literature and fellow writers, from Julian Barnes on love to the politics of George Orwell’s ‘Inside the Whale’, providing fresh insight on Kipling, V.S. Naipaul, Graham Greene, John le Carré, Raymond Carver, Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon among others.

Profound, passionate and insightful, Imaginary Homelands is a masterful collection from one of the greatest writers working today.

Review

Literature of the highest order ― Michael Foot

A book bristling with intelligence, deeply held opinions, and wonderful flights of fancy ― Boston Globe

Playful profound and provocative…Rushdie is never less than instructive. He holds nothing back ― New York Newsday

A deft, various, and humane collection — Christopher Hitchens ― Independent

More intelligence and intellectual courage than most writers summon up in a lifetime ― The Times

About the Author

Salman Rushdie was born in 1947 and has lived in England since 1961. He is the author of six novels: Grimus, Midnight’s Children, which won the Booker Prize in 1981 and the James Tait Black Prize, Shame, winner of the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, The Satanic Verses, which won the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which won the Writer’s Guild Award and The Moor’s Last Sigh which won the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award. He has also published a collection of short stories East, West, a book of reportage The Jaguar Smile, a volume of essays Imaginary Homelands and a work of film criticism The Wizard of Oz. His most recent novel is The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which was published in 1999.

Salman Rushdie was awarded Germany’s Author of the Year Award for his novel The Satanic Verses in 1989. In 1993, Midnight’s Children was voted the ‘Booker of Bookers’, the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. In the same year, he was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. He is also Honorary Professor in the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His books have been published in more than two dozen languages.