East, West

Description

A brilliant collection of short stories from the Booker prize-winning author. This dazzling collection of short stories explores the allure and confusion of what happens when East meets West. Fantasy and realism collide as a rickshaw driver writes letters home describing his film star career in Bombay; a mispronunciation leads to romance and an unusual courtship in sixties London; two childhood friends turned diplomats live out fantasies hatched by Star Trek; and Christopher Columbus dreams of consummating his relationship with Queen Isabella. With one foot in the East and one foot in the West, this collection reveals the oceanic distances and the unexpected intimacies between the two.

Sir Salman Rushdie has received many awards for his writing, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 1993 Midnight's Children was judged to be the 'Booker of Bookers', the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. In June 2007 he received a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

A vindication of the rights of fiction...His story-telling powers are alive and well - his ingenuity, wit, charm and his restless talent for the unexpected * Sunday Times * Literary magic * Literary Review * The most original imagination writing today * Nadine Gordimer * Scheherazade meets Star Trek in these well-honed miniatures from the maestro of the cross-cultural blockbuster * Independent * Home in neither, but poised somewhere in between - Salman Rushdie's volume of short stories on this theme is deft, inventive, entertaining * Financial Times *