Salman Rushdie: Contemporary Critical Perspectives

Description

Sir Salman Rushdie is perhaps the most significant living novelist in English. His second novel, Midnight's Children, is regularly cited as the 'Booker of Bookers' and its impact is still being felt throughout in world literature. His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, led to the 'Rushdie Affair' certainly the most significant literary-political event since the Second World War. Rushdie has continued to produce challenging fiction, controversial, thought-provoking non-fiction and has a presence on the world stage as a public intellectual. This collection brings together leading scholars to provide an up-to-date critical guide to Rushdie's writing from his earliest works up to the most recent, including his 2012 memoir of his time in hiding, Joseph Anton. Contributors offer new perspectives on key issues, including: Rushdie as a postcolonial writer; Rushdie as a postmodernist; his use and reuse of the canon; the 'Rushdie Affair'; his responses to 9/11 and to the 'War on Terror'; and issues of more complex philosophical weight arising from his fiction.

Robert Eaglestone is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. His previous publications include Doing English: A Guide for Literature Students. Martin McQuillan is Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Analysis and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science at Kingston University, UK, and Co-Director of the London Graduate School.

"Readers do not have to have read and be familiar with Rushdie's novels to read this book. Parashkevova gets her points across through concise and adept description of plots, narratives and characters, so that non-Rushdie readers can follow and appreciate Parashkevova's arguments. Those who have read the novels, however, will benefit from a different perspective on the worlds within [...] On the whole, the book's writing is smart and densely packed, and its pace fast and unrelenting [...]Salman Rushdie's cities provides a critical lens into the portrayal and evolution of cities and its inhabitants in Rushdie's novels. It masterfully combines literary criticism, urban theory and political commentary..." --Khairunnisa Ibrahim, University of Oxford, UGRG Book Review Series