Latest news with #Midnight'sChildren
Indian Express
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Salman Rushdie just turned 78. What has the ‘Midnight's Children' author been writing lately?
(Written by Taniya Chopra) 'What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.' The words sum up Salman Rushdie. We all know him for Midnight's Children, the book that made him famous, and The Satanic Verses, the novel which caused global outrage and forced him into hiding for years. Rushdie chose to continue writing no matter what. Even after making it through a brutal knife attack in 2022 that made him blind in one eye, he did not step back. Many authors in his place would have completely stopped after such a traumatic event. But his passion did not wither. Here's a look at five of Rushdie's most recent works. 'We would not be who we are today without the calamities of our yesterdays.' Salman Rushdie's most recent work is his memoir, Knife, written after the 2022 knife attack that nearly ended his life. He shows us his trauma and his will to still write. It's honest and it's witty. Unlike his earlier memoir Joseph Anton, this one is written in the first person, making it feel much more personal. Knife is a record of survival and a bold statement on the freedom to speak and write. It gives us rare insight into Rushdie's mind, and shows his unwavering dedication to the written word, even when writing itself becomes an act of defiance. In 14th century South India, nine-year-old Pampa Kampana witnesses her mother walk into 'the bonfire of the dead'. She is blessed with magical powers and a mission to build a world where no woman suffers as her mother did. She builds Bisnaga, a kingdom meant to uplift women in a patriarchal world. Victory City is an imaginative tale about power and the stories that shape civilisations. With beauty and emotion, Rushdie revives a forgotten empire and the extraordinary woman who dreamed it into existence. It's vintage Rushdie, yet strikingly fresh in its voice. This is a collection of essays and speeches written by Salman Rushdie. From Cervantes to Kafka, he explores the writers who shaped his thinking, while tackling themes like censorship, migration, politics and the power of imagination. We get to see what Rushdie thinks of other writers' writing, how their ideas and style show the times they lived in. It shows his thoughts on storytelling and rapidly changing world. With clarity and wit, Languages of Truth is a celebration of literature and a bold reflection on the cultural shifts of our time. Quichotte is a television obsessed, slightly delusional travelling salesman who falls hopelessly in love with a TV star he has never met. Determined to win her heart, he goes on a journey across America with his imaginary son. He faces everything from the opioid crisis to cultural absurdities. But Quichotte isn't acting alone here. He is actually the creation of Sam DuChamp, a struggling writer in the middle of a personal breakdown. The lines between Sam DuChamp, the author and his character blur, as both try to complete their parallel quests. It is a surreal, moving reflection on identity. Inspired by Cervantes' Don Quixote, Rushdie writes a satire of modern America, one that is between reality and illusion. If you enjoy thought provoking books that are entertaining as well, then Quichotte is a must-read. Nero Golden, a billionaire from Bombay, arrives in New York. And what is a billionaire without secrets? With him come his three sons, still trying to understand who he really is. They settle into The Gardens, an elite, enclosed community in Greenwich Village, and instantly disrupt the lives of those around them. Their story is told by René, a filmmaker who becomes fascinated by the Goldens and finds in them the perfect material for his next project. From Nero's romance with a mysterious Russian to the reveal of long-buried secrets, the Goldens' world begins to crack. And, so does the nation around them. This book shows a family and a nation on the verge of transformation. If you're into family dramas and then this is a must-read. (The writer is an intern with
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Scotsman
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Scotsman
Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple review: 'alert to the details'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... To convey the scope and subtlety of Sam Dalrymple's book, rather than refer readers to the subtitle – 'Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia' – it is better, I think, to sketch the outline of stories which encapsulate its capacity to fray and unpick preconceptions. Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in conversation at the All-India Congress committee meeting at Bombay, 1946 | Getty Images In 1929-31 Gandhi travelled the breadth of 'British India'; from Aden (now in Yemen) to Rangoon (now in Myanmar, formerly Burma). In an interview he conducts, Dalrymple records that Mohammad Zaul Hassan says 'I was born in India, grew up in Bangladesh, became a citizen of Pakistan, now I'm British'. Salman Rushdie may have given the Partition of 14-15 August 1947 an almost mythic significance in his Booker winning Midnight's Children, but it is clear from this book that the whole situation was far, far more complex than a singular event. The message is more mess than messianic moment. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Even in introducing his five partitions, Dalrymple is precise. The first is the partition of Burma from India; linked to both Bamar separatism and Hindu concerns about the integrity of the holy and ancient 'Bharat'. But, as he notes, the Straits Settlement and the Somaliland Protectorate occurred beforehand (in 1867 and 1898): the five here have been chosen not just for being post-World War One (which saw the dismantling of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires), but after the introduction of Indian Empire passports. It is ironic that this bureaucratic formality went hand in hand with its own disintegration. Sign up to our FREE Arts & Culture newsletter at The second partition was the ongoing divestment of the Arabian Peninsular states (including Aden). The third, which created West and East Pakistan, is the one that is now most associated with 'Partition', although the fourth – the partition of Princely India, with some 565 entities, including Jammu and Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Mysore, deciding whether to ally with Pakistan or India – is perhaps the most significant in terms of power dynamics. Finally, there is the 1971 secession of East Pakistan to become Bangladesh. This vast amount of material is handled admirably, particularly since Dalrymple keeps the hypotheticals in full view at the same time. None of the outcomes was pre-ordained or inevitable, and the contingencies are as informative. There are reasons why Bhutan, Nepal and Oman kept their independence while Sikkim, Nagaland and Junagadh did not. Both Nehru and Aung San contemplated the possibility of an Asiatic Federation, including Sri Lanka as well. The levels of brinksmanship are astonishing – one possible outcome, since 1974, has been nuclear, yet even without that, mass displacement, starvation and old fashioned brutality had done more than enough. Dalrymple, incidentally, should be commended for being very careful about the contested use of the word genocide. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The nuancing of imperial history has been more of the most welcome features of modern historiography. On one hand, the subcontinent shows the ideological assertions of almost primal historicity. The definition of an ideal and ancient Hindu 'Bharat' both coalesces and excludes; even Pakistan's name, coined by Rahmat Ali and originally 'Pakstan', was both a partial acronym of Panjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan and a reference to the Persian word for pure. Some of these ideas are novelised in Gurnaik Johal's Saraswati, a fiction which might be slightly over-determined, but in its Calvino-esque braiding of stories is markedly more ambitious than most debuts. The insistence on aboriginal unity is offset with political theoretical problems about the right to separate: if secession is good enough for one area, why not for another? We are accustomed here to such arguments being deployed in terms of, say, Shetlandic or Orcadian independence. On the subcontinent this was exacerbated in the Princely States, where, for example, Jammu and Kashmir had a Muslim majority population and a Hindu ruler, Maharajah Hari Singh; while Hyderabad had a Hindu majority population and a Muslim ruler, the Nizam. It was in Kashmir that a Scottish officer, William Brown, decided to mutiny to prevent the areas, particularly Gilgit province, joining India. With 'three bottles of gin inside us', he and Jock Mathieson 'became uncontrollably hilarious… [and] created a terrific disturbance', raised the Pakistan flag and saw off the emergent 'United States of Gilgit'. Neighbouring Hunza and Nagar toyed, it was claimed, with succession to Russia instead. Despite the immensity of the canvas, Dalrymple is alert to the telling detail and the revealing anecdote. Although I particularly liked the monkeys purportedly trained to throw hand grenades, Dalrymple cleverly has his cake and eats it with such material. It is too good to not include the Nawab of Junagadh, with his 800 dogs, each with their own servant, and the ostentatiously lavish wedding for his favourite Roshana, to a Labrador called Bobby, even if, as he points it, it is not true. Of course, such orientalism is essentially a literary phenomenon, and the fact that such stories were told tells is more than the stark reality. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Dalrymple is especially good at providing pen portraits of the key players – Jinna, Nehru and Aung San, as well as Gandhi, Menon, the Mountbattens and less well known figures like Naga nationalist Zapu Phizo. These state-level players are supplemented by written and oral people's histories. It is always an incomprehensible irony to me that we indulge in so much phony nostalgia for Empire in this county, and know so little of the Empire. As Kipling said, 'What do they know of England who only England know?' There ought to be a mammoth, epic, television series: but more The Hollow Crown rather than The Crown, please.
News18
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- News18
AI No Threat To Authors, Says Salman Rushdie, 'Until It Can...'
Last Updated: Rushdie, who was speaking at the renowned Hay Festival in Wales, revealed that he has a simple benchmark for the safety of human authorship At the renowned Hay Festival in Wales, celebrated author Salman Rushdie shared his signature sharp and humorous insights on the hotly debated topic of artificial intelligence's impact on creative writing. Known for his wit and pointed commentary, Rushdie, the acclaimed author of 'Midnight's Children" and his recent memoir 'Knife", reassured writers that they need not worry, at least for now. His simple benchmark for the safety of human authorship? The day a robot successfully crafts a genuinely funny joke. 'I've never tried AI," Rushdie said to the audience with a grin. 'I pretend it doesn't exist. It has no sense of humour; you wouldn't want to hear a joke from ChatGPT." He underscored his viewpoint, stating definitively, 'If there's ever a moment when ChatGPT writes a funny book, I think we're in trouble." This appearance at the Hay Festival was one of Rushdie's most significant public engagements in the United Kingdom since the brutal stabbing attack he suffered in 2022, which left him blind in one eye. Despite this traumatic event, his characteristic resilience and sharp intellect were evident as he addressed contemporary issues in literature and technology. In 1989, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for Rushdie's death over alleged blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Verses. Following this, Rushdie went into hiding under British protection and later settled in New York, in the United States. The book was banned in 20 countries. 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. On August 12, 2022, while about to start a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, Rushdie was attacked by 27-year-old Hadi Matar, who rushed onto the stage and stabbed him repeatedly, including in the face, neck, and abdomen. Matar was pulled away before being taken into custody by a state trooper; Rushdie was airlifted to UPMC Hamot, a tertiary trauma centre in Erie, Pennsylvania, where he underwent surgery before being put on a ventilator. On October 23, 2022, his agent reported that Rushdie had lost sight in one eye and the use of one hand but survived the murder attempt. The assailant, Hadi Matar, was sentenced in a New York court for the attempted murder of Rushdie. The author later said he was 'pleased" that the man had been handed the maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. (With agency inputs)
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'I'm over knife attack,' says Salman Rushdie
Sir Salman Rushdie says he has moved on from the knife attack which has seen his attacker jailed for attempted murder. Hadi Matar, 27, was sentenced to 25 years last month after repeatedly stabbing Sir Salman on a New York lecture stage in 2022. Sir Salman, who has a new book out later this year, told the Hay Festival that an "important moment" came for him when he and his wife Eliza "went back to the scene of the crime to show myself I could stand up where I fell down". "It will be nice to talk about fiction again because ever since the attack, really the only thing anybody's wanted to talk about is the attack, but I'm over it." Sir Salman recently told Radio 4's Today programme that he was "pleased" the man who tried to kill him had received the maximum possible prison sentence. The Midnight's Children and Satanic Verses writer was left with life-changing injuries after the incident - he is now blind in one eye, has damage to his liver and a paralysed hand caused by nerve damage to his arm. Last year, Sir Salman published a book titled Knife reflecting on the event, which he has described as "my way of fighting back". The attack came 35 years after Sir Salman's controversial novel The Satanic Verses, which had long made him the target of death threats for its portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad. In November, the author will publish a short story collection, The Eleventh Hour, his first work of fiction to be written since the stabbing. Security was tight for Sir Salman's event, with sniffer dogs present and bag checks leading to a 15-minute delay. He waved at the audience as he entered the stage and humbly gestured to them to stop applauding before joking that: "I can't see everyone - but I can hear them." He said he was feeling "excellent" although there "were bits of me that I'm annoyed about, like not having a right eye. But on the whole, I've been very fortunate and I'm in better shape that maybe I would have expected." In a wide-ranging discussion, Sir Salman also touched on US politics, declaring that "America was not in great shape". In an apparent reference to President Donald Trump, Sir Salman spoke about "the moment of hope, that image of Barack and Michelle Obama walking down the mall in DC with the crowds around them... people dancing in the streets in New York. And to go from that to the orange moment that we live in, it's, let's just say, disappointing. But he said he was still positive about the future. "I think I suffer from the optimism disease... I can't help thinking somehow it will be alright." Speaking about free speech, he said "it means tolerating people who say things you don't like". He recalled a time when a film "in which I was the villain", made around the time of the uproar over Satanic Verses, was not classified by the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) "because it was in a hundred ways defamatory" but he asked them to allow its release. "So they gave it a certificate... and nobody went, you know why? Lousy movie. And it taught me a lesson. Let it out and trust the audience. And that's still my view. "I think we do live in a moment when people are too eager to prohibit speech they disapprove of. That's a very slippery slope" and warned young people "to think about it." When asked about the effect of AI on authors, Sir Salman said: "I don't have Chat GPT... I try very hard to pretend it doesn't exist. Someone asked it to write a couple of hundred words like me... it was terrible. And it has no sense of humour." Despite being considered one of the greatest living writers, Sir Salman joked that authors "don't even have that much money... except the two of us (him and host Erica Wagner) and those who write about child wizards... the Taylor Swift of literature," referring to JK Rowling. "Good on her." Rushdie 'pleased' with attacker's maximum sentence Salman Rushdie to release first fiction since stabbing Salman Rushdie: Losing an eye upsets me every day Succession creator Jesse Armstrong is writing about rich people again Jacqueline Wilson says she wouldn't return to Tracy Beaker as an adult
1News
17-05-2025
- 1News
Man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie sentenced to 25 years in prison
A man who attacked Salman Rushdie with a knife in front of a stunned audience in 2022, leaving the prizewinning author blind in one eye, was sentenced this morning to 25 years in prison. Hadi Matar, 27, stood quietly as the judge pronounced the sentence. He did not deny attacking Rushdie, and when he was invited to address the court before being sentenced, Matar got in a few last insults at the writer. He said he believed in freedom of speech but called Rushdie "a hypocrite". "Salman Rushdie wants to disrespect other people," said Matar, clad in white-striped jail clothing and wearing handcuffs. "He wants to be a bully, he wants to bully other people. I don't agree with that." Rushdie, 77, did not return to western New York for the sentencing but submitted a victim impact statement in which he said he has nightmares about what happened, Chautauqua County District Attorney Jason Schmidt said. The statement was not made public. Rushdie, through his agent, declined to comment after the sentencing. During the trial, the author described how he believed he was dying when a masked attacker plunged a knife into his head and body more than a dozen times as he was being introduced at the Chautauqua Institution to speak about writer safety. Video of the assault, captured by the venue's cameras and played at trial, show Matar approaching the seated Rushdie from behind and reaching around him to stab at his torso with a knife. As the audience gasps and screams, Rushdie is seen raising his arms and rising from his seat, walking and stumbling for a few steps with Matar hanging on, swinging and stabbing until they both fall and are surrounded by onlookers who rush in to separate them. A jury found Matar guilty of attempted murder and assault in February after deliberating for less than two hours. Judge David Foley told Matar that he thought it was notable he had chosen to try and kill Rushdie at the Chautauqua Institution, a summer retreat that prides itself on the free exchange of ideas. "We all have the right to have our own ideals; we all have the right to carry them," Foley said. "But when you interfere with someone else's ability to do that by committing a violent act, in the United States of America, that has to be an answerable crime." The judge also gave Matar a seven-year term for wounding a man who was on stage with Rushdie, though that time will run concurrently to the other sentence. After the attack, Rushdie spent 17 days at a Pennsylvania hospital and more than three weeks at a New York City rehabilitation centre. The author of Midnight's Children, The Moor's Last Sigh and Victory City detailed his recovery in his 2024 memoir, Knife. Matar's lawyer, Nathaniel Barone, had asked the judge for a sentence of around 12 years, citing his lack of a previous criminal record. Schmidt, the prosecutor, said Matar deserved the maximum sentence of 25 years, saying Matar "designed this attack so that he could inflict the most amount of damage, not just upon Mr. Rushdie, but upon this community, upon the 1400 people who were there to watch it." Matar next faces a federal trial on terrorism-related charges. While the first trial focused mostly on the details of the knife attack itself, the next one is expected to delve into the more complicated issue of motive. He has pleaded not guilty. If convicted of the federal charges, Matar faces a maximum penalty of life in prison. Authorities said Matar, a US citizen, was attempting to carry out a decades-old fatwa, or edict, calling for Rushdie's death when he traveled from his home in Fairview, New Jersey, to target Rushdie at the summer retreat about 110km southwest of Buffalo. Matar believed the fatwa, first issued in 1989, was backed by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah and endorsed in a 2006 speech by the group's secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, according to federal prosecutors. Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the fatwa after publication of Rushdie's novel, The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims consider blasphemous. Rushdie spent years in hiding, but after Iran announced it would not enforce the decree he travelled freely over the past quarter century.
