 First edition | |
| Author | Salman Rushdie |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Non-fiction, autobiography |
| Published | May 2021 |
| Publisher | Penguin Random House |
| ISBN | 0735279357 |
Languages of Truth is a collection of essays by Salman Rushdie. It was published in May 2021 by Random House. [1]
The book includes pieces written between 2003 and 2020, many of them never previously in print and engaging with a variety of subjects such as storytelling, literature, culture, myths, language, migration and censorship. [1]
Rushdie begins the book with a sentence, "Before there were books, there were stories", and reflects on the art of storytelling and on his individual search for a narrative. A journey that took him beyond the realm of realism in order to create magical universes of alternative realities. [2] In the book, Rushdie celebrates the potential of stories as catalysts for nourishing the imagination. He suggests that adults lose some of the awe children have for repeated stories with which they fall in love. [3]
Languages of truth reflects on novels and novelists ranging from Leo Tolstoy, Philip Roth, Cervantes and Samuel Beckett to Kurt Vonnegut. There are also some pieces on painters like Amrita Sher-Gil and Bhupen Khakhar, [2] as well as some mentions of directors like Federico Fellini and Danny Boyle. [4]
In an interview about his book with Amanpour & Company , Rushdie says: [5]
I grow up in India the immediate aftermath of British Empire, and what the British told people was the truth about that event was very rapidly proved to be something very unlike the truth. I mean I remember in India as a child the history books changing from the ones that the British had left behind, to the ones that had been written after independence; and people who had been characterized as villains, were now characterized as heroes, because of their part in the independence struggle. So truth is a battle, and maybe never more so than now.
According to Book Marks, the book received "mixed" reviews based on twelve critic reviews, with one being "rave" and four being "positive" and four being "mixed" and three being "pan". [6] [7] [8]
Languages of Truth was longlisted for PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award. [1]
In a lukewarm review for The New York Times , Dwight Garner described the book as "a defensive castling move", referring to the author's suggestion that the turn in literary culture from brio-filled imaginative writing toward the humbler delights of "autofiction" is the reason for misunderstanding and mistreatment of his works. Garner compares the book with one of Rushdie's previous ones, Imaginary Homelands , saying: "Back then Rushdie wrote nonfiction for editors, not for foundations and colleges", and although then "he was not a major critic" he was "a strong one". Garner goes on to conclude: "If his arguments about the state of fiction in Languages of Truth don't convince, at least they're genuine signs of life." [9]
Paul Perry, in The Independent , described the book as interesting, engaging and entertaining, mentioning that many of the essays were delivered as lectures and "even though they have been revised for print they maintain a kind of erudite breeziness in their tone". [10]
Source: [11]
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Kurt Vonnegut was an American author known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. His published work includes fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and five nonfiction works over fifty-plus years; further works have been published since his death.
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
Midnight's Children is a 1981 novel by Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist story told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, set in the context of historical events. The style of preserving history with fictional accounts is self-reflexive.
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Bhupen Khakhar was an Indian artist. He was a member of the Baroda Group and gained international recognition for his work as "India's first 'Pop' artist."
The Satanic Verses controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Verses, and came to include a larger debate about censorship and religious violence. It included numerous killings, attempted killings, and bombings by perpetrators who supported Islam.
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Abdulrazak Gurnah is a Tanzanian-born British novelist and academic. He was born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar and moved to the United Kingdom in the 1960s as a refugee during the Zanzibar Revolution. His novels include Paradise (1994), which was shortlisted for both the Booker and the Whitbread Prize; By the Sea (2001), which was longlisted for the Booker and shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Desertion (2005), shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Jyotindra Manshankar Bhatt, better known as Jyoti Bhatt, is an Indian artist best known for his modernist work in painting and printmaking and also his photographic documentation of rural Indian culture. He studied painting under N. S. Bendre and K.G. Subramanyan at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University (M.S.U.), Baroda. Later he studied fresco and mural painting at Banasthali Vidyapith in Rajasthan, and in the early 1960s went on to study at the Academia di Belle Arti in Naples, Italy, as well the Pratt Institute in New York. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2019 and elected as a Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi in 2022.
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Quichotte is a 2019 novel by Salman Rushdie. It is his fourteenth novel, published on 29 August 2019 by Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom and Penguin Books India in India. It was published in the United States on 3 September 2019 by Random House. Inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's classic novel Don Quixote, Quichotte is a metafiction that tells the story of an addled Indian-American man who travels across America in pursuit of a celebrity television host with whom he has become obsessed.
On August 12, 2022, British-American novelist Salman Rushdie was stabbed multiple times as he was about to give a public lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York, United States. A 24-year-old suspect, Hadi Matar, was arrested directly and charged the following day with assault and attempted murder. Rushdie was gravely wounded and hospitalized. Interviewer Henry Reese was also injured by the attacker.
You Can't Please All is an oil on canvas painting by Indian artist Bhupen Khakhar (1934–2003). Khakhar, famously recognized as India's first pop artist, completed the painting in 1981 in Baroda, Gujarat. The painting took him five months to finish.