An Elaborately Constructed Artifice: Maxwell’s Demon by Steven Hall
Slipstream may as well be what we call our bewilderment.
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Posts Tagged: salman rushdie
Notable Online: 10/4–10/10
Literary events taking place virtually this week!
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Notable Philadelphia: 12/10–12/16
Literary events in and around Philly this week!
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Notable San Francisco: 9/18–9/24
Literary events in and around the Bay Area this week!
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Notable NYC: 8/31–9/6
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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Notable NYC: 4/27–5/3
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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Notable NYC: 1/26–2/1
Literary events in and around NYC this week!
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Notable NYC: 6/23–6/29
Literary events in and around New York City this week!
...moreNotable Los Angeles: 9/11–9/17
Literary events and readings in and around L.A. this week!
...moreNotable NYC: 9/2–9/8
Literary events and readings in and around New York City this week!
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The Human Cost: Discussing Political Storytelling with Olivia Kate Cerrone
Olivia Kate Cerrone discusses her novella The Hunger Saint and the significance of historical fiction.
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The Rumpus Interview with Gregory Pardlo
Poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardlo discusses the reverence for poetry found in other cultures, how he strings a book together, and the future of American poetry in light of our national crisis.
...moreAziz Nesin’s Ghost
This week, the Turkish government has jailed a prominent politician who is referred to fondly as “Kurdish Obama” and shutdown Cumhuriyet, a popular newspaper. Amid these distressing developments, Kaya Genç looks towards books and history in her profile of 20th century Turkish humorist Aziz Nesin at The Millions. Nesin, who Genç compares to Christopher Hitchens and […]
...moreWeekly Geekery
Your brain on stories. (Or, molecular effects of Star Wars.) Read books, live longer… …but only Toni Morrison or Salman Rushdie will make you live better. Mapping the human condition on 10,000 New Yorkers. Startup culture meets culture culture. Afrofuturistic science fiction teleports to fashion.
...moreAll That We Could Do with This Emotion
Writing for the Guardian, novelist Val McDermid disputes the recent study which suggests that “literary” fiction readers are more empathetic than “genre” readers: There is no doubt that, historically, there was a valid distinction. Nobody would attempt to suggest that there is an equivalence between Agatha Christie and Virginia Woolf. (Let’s face it, Woolf couldn’t plot for toffee.) […]
...moreWriting from the Margins into the Universal
Sahota takes it further in “The Year of the Runaways”: “What decadence this belonging rubbish was, what time the rich must have if they could sit around and weave great worries out of such threadbare things.” With an eye on two new novels by Indian writers, and perspective from writers such as Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa […]
...moreNotable NYC: 12/12–12/18
Saturday 12/12: Diana Hamilton and Steve McCaffery join the Segue series. Zinc Bar, 4:30 p.m., $5. Many people read Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. Housing Works, 1 p.m., free. Brian Matthew Kim, Ann Podracky, Jolie Hale, and Jason N. Fischedick join the Oh, Bernice! reading series. Astoria Bookshop, 7 p.m., free. Thomas Sayers Ellis, Ailish […]
...moreThe President’s Holiday Reading List
Electric Literature has the scoop on the list of books President Obama and his family bought during their recent excursion on Small Business Saturday. Salman Rushdie and Jonathan Franzen made their way onto the President’s reading list.
...moreThe Freedom of Fiction
Literature may be weak because it has no real power in the world, but in a way it is the grandest narrative of all, in that it puts ourselves into question with fiction. We challenge ourselves and refuse to take the world as a given. We challenge all correctives of opinion, all appeasements, all fears. […]
...moreIran Calls Rushdie Speech at Frankfurt “Anti-Cultural”
This has been organised by the Frankfurt book fair and crosses one of our political system’s red lines. We consider this move as anti-cultural,” [Seyed Abbas Salehi, deputy minister for culture and Islamic guidance] said, according to local news agencies. “Imam Khomeini’s fatwa on this issue is reflective of our religion and it will never […]
...moreA Q&A with Salman Rushdie
The fictions of literature declare themselves as fictions — they are lies which admit they are lies and are therefore able, at their best, to tell profound truths. The fictions of politics declare themselves as truths and are therefore, often, just lies. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Salman Rushdie discusses his latest novel, […]
...moreSacred Literature
For the New York Times, Alexandra Alter interviews Salman Rushdie about his new novel Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. Their discussion covers the stylistic choices that went into the novel, as well as the role of mythology and polytheistic religions in Rushdie’s larger body of work: Ideas are interesting to me, and religions are a […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Susan Barker
Susan Barker discusses her third novel, The Incarnations, writing dialogue in a second language, the Opium Wars and Chinese history, and the years of research that went into her book.
...moreLost in Translation, Lost in Context
PEN America generated quite a controversy when it decided to honor French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo. Six authors called for a boycott of the gala and circulated a petition slamming the organization. Other authors, like Salman Rushdie, criticized the critics. Despite all the back-and-forth, the one perspective that seemed missing from the discussion was that […]
...moreRushdie Slams Withdrawn PEN Panelists
PEN America announced on Sunday their intention to honor Charlie Hebdo’s surviving staff with the Freedom of Expression Courage award at their May 5 Gala. The novelists Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, and Taiye Selasi have withdrawn as hosts of the ceremony, claiming the French magazine promotes hate speech and […]
...moreSpeak for Yourself
Over at the New Yorker, Salman Rushdie looks back on an evening with Gunter Grass; they drank Schnapps, punked journalists, and had the best birthday party ever.
...moreRushdie Goes Medieval
Salman Rushdie, no stranger to controversy, now finds himself under scrutiny from a different sort of institution: the Times Literary Supplement. Michael Caines, writing for TLS, takes issue with Rushdie’s recent use of the word “medieval” in a statement made about the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Caines unpacks the word’s historical usage in distancing Renaissance thinkers […]
...moreA Brief History of James
Brook Stephenson’s nabbed an interview with Marlon James—the two chat about Salman Rushdie, the black hobbit argument, and the difference between The Book You Want to Write and The Book You Think You Should Write: “I read lots of great books, but that was the book when I said, “All right that’s it, I got […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Nayomi Munaweera
Nayomi Munaweera discusses Sri Lanka, its brutal Civil War, and writing a novel about two artists with their identities wrapped up in two different countries, Sri Lanka and America.
...moreChoosing Sides
Andrew Wylie, arguably the most powerful literary agent in the world, has chosen sides in the Amazon-Hachette battle for global domination, and he’s allied with Authors United. Wylie represents a slew of high-profile writers like Philip Roth, Salman Rushdie, and V.S. Naipul—writers he has enlisted to join the 1,000-plus strong group fighting against Amazon. Alex […]
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