Stop! cried the Author, knowing what would happen next, the thing he could not stop, for he had already written it; it had already happened, so it could not be prevented from happening. His heart pounded, feeling as if it might burst from his chest. Everything was coming to an end.
The end cannot be changed after it has ended; not the end of the universe, not the death of an Author, nor the end of two precious, even if very small, human lives.
There they stood in the gateway, on the threshold of an impossible dream: Miss Salma R and her Quichotte.
For Eliza
This novel owes some obvious debts: to Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman) and to Jules Massenet’s opera Don Quichotte; to Katherine MacLean’s story “Pictures Don’t Lie,” Arthur C. Clarke’s story “The Nine Billion Names of God,” Eugene Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros (translated from the French by Derek Prouse), and, for the nickname of the Trampoline, to Paul Simon’s song “Graceland.” For the sequence of seven Valleys, I’m indebted to Farid-ud-Din Attar’s The Conference of the Birds. My thanks, too, to Francesco Clemente, for cleaning up the cricket’s Italian (any faults that remain in it are my own); to Andrew Wylie, Jacqueline Ko, Emma Herman, Tracy Bohan, and Jennifer Bernstein at the Wylie Agency; and, for her invaluable editorial guidance, Susan Kamil at Random House New York, as well as Louise Dennys at Knopf Canada and Bea Hemming at Jonathan Cape in London. Thanks, finally, to those friends and family members who served as helpful early readers, to Rachel Eliza Griffiths for her photographs and much else, and to my former assistant Dana Czapnik, now happily launched on her own literary career.
By Salman Rushdie
FICTION
Grimus
Midnight’s Children
Shame
The Satanic Verses
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
East, West
The Moor’s Last Sigh
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
Fury
Shalimar the Clown
The Enchantress of Florence
Luka and the Fire of Life
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
The Golden House
Quichotte
NONFICTION
Joseph Anton: A Memoir
The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey
Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981–1991
Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992–2002
PLAYS
Haroun and the Sea of Stories (with Tim Supple and David Tushingham)
Midnight’s Children (with Tim Supple and Simon Reade)
SCREENPLAY
Midnight’s Children
ANTHOLOGIES
Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing, 1947–1997 (co-editor)
Best American Short Stories 2008 (co-editor)
SALMAN RUSHDIE is the author of thirteen previous novels: Grimus, Midnight’s Children (which was awarded the Booker Prize in 1981), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, Luka and the Fire of Life, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, and most recently The Golden House.
Rushdie is also the author of a book of stories, East, West, and four works of nonfiction: Joseph Anton: A Memoir, Imaginary Homelands, The Jaguar Smile, and Step Across This Line. He is the co-editor of Mirrorwork, an anthology of contemporary Indian writing, and of the 2008 Best American Short Stories anthology.
A fellow of the British Royal Society of Literature, Salman Rushdie has received, among other honors, the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel (twice), the Writers’ Guild Award, the James Tait Black Prize, the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature, Author of the Year prizes in both Britain and Germany, the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature, the Premio Grinzane Cavour in Italy, the Círculo de Bellas Artes Gold Medal in Spain, the Carlos Fuentes Medal in Mexico, the Crossword Book Award in India, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, the London International Writers’ Award, the James Joyce Award of University College Dublin, the St. Louis Literary Award, the Los Angeles Public Library Literary Award, the Carl Sandburg Prize of the Chicago Public Library, the Chicago Tribune Literary Prize, the Norman Mailer Prize, and a U.S. National Arts Award. He holds honorary doctorates and fellowships at six European and seven American universities, is an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at M.I.T, and was for ten years a University Distinguished Professor at Emory University. Currently, Rushdie is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.
He has received the Freedom of the City in Mexico City, Strasbourg, and El Paso, and the Edgerton Prize of the American Civil Liberties Union. He holds the rank of Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres—France’s highest artistic honor. Between 2004 and 2006 he served as President of PEN American Center and for ten years served as the Chairman of the PEN World Voices International Literary Festival, which he helped to create. In June 2007 he received a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honors for services to literature. In 2008 he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was named a Library Lion of the New York Public Library. In addition, Midnight’s Children was named the Best of the Booker—the best winner in the award’s forty-year history—by a public vote. His books have been translated into over forty languages.
He collaborated in adapting Midnight’s Children for the stage. It was performed in London, Ann Arbor, and New York by the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2004, an opera based upon Haroun and the Sea of Stories was premiered by the New York City Opera at Lincoln Center.
A film of Midnight’s Children, directed by Deepa Mehta, was released in 2012. That year, Rushdie was awarded the Canadian Screen Award for best adapted screenplay.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet, in which the Orpheus myth winds through a story set in the world of rock music, was turned into a song by U2 with lyrics by Salman Rushdie.
salmanrushdie.com
Facebook.com/salmanrushdieauthor
Twitter: @SalmanRushdie
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