Book description
The subjects of Salman Rushdie's collection of non-fiction range from
The Wizard of Oz, U2, India and Indian writing, the death of
Princess Diana, and football, to twentieth-century writers including
Angela Carter, Arthur Miller, Edward Said, J. M. Coetzee and Arundhati
Roy.
In a central section, 'Messages from the Plague Years', Rushdie
focuses on the fight against the Iranian fatwa, presenting texts both
personal and political, which show for the first time how it was to
live through those days. Rushdie's columns for the New York
Times confront current issues - Kashmir, Northern Ireland, Kosovo,
Islam and the West - as well as lighter topics such as reality TV,
sport and sleaze. The book ends with the lectures that give it its
title - Rushdie's exploration of the theme of frontiers: crossing
them, breaking taboos, and - in the light of September 11 - the world
of permeable frontiers in which we all live.
Salman Rushdie is the author of ten novels, one collection of short
stories, three works of non-fiction, and the co-editor of
The Vintage
Book of Indian Writing
. In 1993
Midnight's Children
was judged to be the Best of the Booker, the best novel to have won the
Booker Prize in its forty year history.
The Moor's Last Sigh
won the Whitbread Prize in 1995 and the European Union's Aristeion
Prize for Literature in 1996. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of
Literature and a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.
