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00:04Sir Salman Rushdie one of the world's greatest novelists his work often
00:09blending myth fantasy and historical themes has won many prestigious literary
00:14awards including the Booker Prize in 1981 for his novel Midnight's Children in
00:211989 the Iranian leader declared Rushdie's fourth novel the Satanic
00:25verses to be blasphemous and pronounced a death sentence against him according to
00:30Tehran radio Ayatollah Khomeini has sentenced him and all those involved in
00:35the book's publication to death and for over a decade he lived in hiding with
00:39police protection a period documented in his 2012 memoir Joseph Anton in August
00:482022 he was brutally attacked on stage at a literary event which left him blind in
00:53one eye his most recent book knife is an account of his survival in this episode
01:00of this cultural life the radio for program Rushdie shares his formative
01:04influences and experiences and reflects on his resilience if you had told me in
01:10advance the following things are gonna happen I would not have bet on myself to
01:13do that well you know but but it turns out turns out that I'm tougher than I
01:20thought
01:51Saman Rushdie welcome to this cultural life thank you I'm so glad to be able to say that because we
01:56were meant to have this conversation in August 2022 yeah and just a week before we were due to record
02:03that
02:03interview you survived a near fatal attack on stage in upstate New York you've undergone multiple surgical
02:11operations and rehabilitation and recovery so I've got to ask how are you now I'm you know I'm surprisingly
02:18well is the thing I mean I I think I surprised myself but I think I also surprised the medical
02:25profession because quite a lot of the this army of specialists who had to sign off on various pieces
02:33of me have expressed the feeling that I've recovered better than expected I think I'm what they call a medical
02:39miracle it's astonishing congratulations on you on this cultural life my guests choose the most
02:46significant influences and experiences that have inspired their own creativity and your first choice
02:52is the independence of India and partition in August 1947 at the stroke of the midnight hour when the world
03:01sleeps India will awake to life and freedom a moment comes which comes but rarely in history
03:12when we step out from the old to the new you were born in Bombay just a few weeks before
03:19independence
03:20so just first of all tell us about family and home life as you remember it well my parents when
03:28they
03:28when they got married when they were first together they they lived in Delhi my father's family was had
03:35lived in Delhi for some time and and then as the independence and partition approached they decided that
03:45they did not want to go to Pakistan that that even though it's Muslim family they were very secularized
03:51and they didn't want to be in a kind of theocracy they felt more Indian than than Muslims so they
03:56wanted to
03:57stay in India but they felt that Delhi which historically is quite volatile that that Delhi might be more
04:06problematic in terms of sectarian trouble and so they decided to move to Bombay as it then was I think
04:14actually when my mother must have been already pregnant with me so I moved to Bombay as well
04:19and you say Muslim family that secular family yes I mean my father was entirely lacking in religion
04:26and my mother I mean my as far as I know from my mother she didn't like to eat pig
04:31and that was about
04:33the extent of her religion so I was brought up in a in a very secular atmosphere in the city
04:44that and and by the way my parents were right which is that when independence happened and all the the
04:51so-called partition riots began Delhi was quite bad I mean there was a lot of trouble in Delhi and
04:57in Bombay
04:58almost nothing happened were there other parts of the family that were affected by people had to be
05:02evacuated and so on I mean fortunately none of my family were hurt in the partition troubles but
05:07it certainly very much split my family more or less down the middle so it ended up with half of
05:12it
05:12in Pakistan and half of it in India but that's a prescient and wise move on on your father's
05:17yes after the partition um Bombay was relatively peaceful and and so I I was brought up in this
05:25very I mean the most cosmopolitan city in India very open and diverse so like in my little
05:32neighborhood where I grew up on a little hilltop I had friends who were from the north of India the
05:39south of India from England from Scandinavia Hindus Muslims Sikhs Parsis Christians must have felt like
05:49a whole world in a neighborhood and it did and and we all shared everybody else's culture you know
05:54they didn't feel that we were separated by it so we have everybody else's festivals just meant more
06:00parties so when it was the Parsi new year we would have that and when it was when it was
06:06Diwali we would
06:07have that and and when it was Eid everybody who was not Muslim which join in with that and so
06:14I grew
06:15up in that really joyous intermingling of cultures and that became very much a part of how I saw the
06:23world and what about storytelling how important was storytelling in your family and who in particular
06:28was telling stories well both my parents were good at it but they had different kinds of stories
06:32you know my dad would tell us as little children his versions of you know Arabian night stories
06:40things like that but obviously in his parental somewhat sanitized versions because the Arabian
06:47nights is full of you know they're pretty rude aren't they pretty rude filthy in fact my mother well the
06:53best thing to say about about her storytelling is that she was world-class gossip
06:58she knew where all the bodies were buried you know and like world-class gossip she couldn't resist
07:04telling you neighborhood gossip neighborhood family friends all kinds of naughty stuff and then at a
07:13certain point she told me that she was going to stop telling me things because I put them in my
07:17books
07:17and she got in trouble but of course she didn't stop your 1981 novel midnight's children is an allegorical
07:26story about post-partition India your protagonist Salim Sinai is born at the stroke of midnight that
07:33heralds independence and along with all the other children born in that hour he is bestowed with
07:40special powers how much of the Bombay that you describe in the early part of Midnight's Children
07:46were you drawing on from your own experience from from your own memories of childhood
07:52there used to be a joke in my family that was told slightly too often where my parents would say
07:58you know Salman was born and eight weeks later the British ran away so I mean not that funny the
08:06first
08:06time but certainly the hundredth time less funny but it gave me the idea about supposing there wasn't
08:13the eight week gap supposing it was exactly that moment what would that lead to and yeah Salim is
08:20basically brought up in my house and in my neighborhood as we were describing it and he went to my
08:28school
08:30and some of the friends with whom he hangs out are they're not exact portraits but they're kind of
08:36composites of people that I knew Midnight's Children follows the fate of India through the eyes of Salim for 30
08:44years and
08:44and charts the gradual decline of optimism in India in the post partition years you were writing of course in
08:51the late
08:511970s when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had declared a state of emergency she was ruling by decree so
08:59were you
09:00writing largely in response to the situation in India at the time when I was writing Midnight's Children the
09:06emergency began while I was writing it began about 1975 and I remember thinking that I didn't want the book
09:15to end
09:16in this moment you know with the kind of semi-dictatorship sort of authoritarian rule but I thought I can't
09:24end it in the book if it hasn't
09:27ended in real life you know and then Mrs. Gandhi made the mistake of calling an election
09:34which she had been advised that she would win and her calculation was that by winning it would kind of
09:40legitimize what she'd done but instead she lost by a landslide. There was dancing in the streets of Delhi as
09:47Mrs. Gandhi's Congress Party suffered defeat after defeat. Supporters of the Opposition People's Party thronged one
09:53of their leaders Mr. Vaj Pai. All this jubilation was humiliation for Mrs. Gandhi who had lost her
10:00own seat by 55,000 votes. I felt like sending her a letter of thanks because she kind of gave
10:06me the end
10:07of my book. But you wrote about her or a version of her in the book there's a character known
10:11as
10:11The Widow who is clearly Mrs. Gandhi and she sued you for libel about a particular line. There was a
10:18line
10:18there's a there was a thing in there about her relationship to her son Sanjay which actually
10:25was the thing that had been published many times before in newspapers and all that and so I wasn't
10:29saying anything new but that was the line she felt that it was libelous and so yes she did initiate
10:38my
10:39my first run-in with political power I guess. How did you feel about that libel suit because I mean
10:44in a way
10:44it sort of confirms the power of fiction. I thought it was quite impressive you know but the pub not
10:50that's
10:50not how my publishers thought. They weren't happy about it. They were quite scared of it I think
10:56but then I mean ended tragically because the soon after the that whole libel business began she was
11:03murdered and having been re-elected having yeah but she murdered by her by her bodyguard. Did you take the
11:10line out by the way in response to the line? I took it out in I think it got taken
11:14out in in some
11:15editions but then but then you know you can't libel the dead. What has been the lasting impact of
11:22Indian independence on your creative imagination and the themes of your work do you think? It's the
11:28foundation I think you know I think I think not although my books have gone away from India and
11:34come back you know I've always thought of it as the kind of maybe the deepest inspiration. I feel
11:43that you know at rock bottom I'm still that boy from Bombay and everything else has just been piled
11:53on top of that but that's the kid underneath. Is that because you draw strength from that character
11:58who grew up in those streets? Yeah and I like the world that he learned about I like the shape
12:02of it
12:03it's it's it's diversity it's collegiality and it's in many ways it's happiness you know and and of
12:13course Midnight's Children is about as you say in a way kind of betrayal of the optimism of
12:19independence. There's a moment at the near the beginning of Midnight's Children when optimism is
12:25described as a disease that you know you can be infected by it and sometimes lifetime infection.
12:31I think I got infected by it you know I think I think that optimism disease I still to some
12:37degree
12:38have it. Your next choice on this cultural life something which has had a profound impact on your
12:43creative output is migration. You now live in New York Salman and you were born as you say in Bombay
12:50but your first migration was when you moved to England you came to England to an English public
12:57school rugby as a teenager. What were your first impressions of the UK? Well first of all I should
13:02say that I wanted to come you know and I wasn't made to come it wasn't my parents exiling me.
13:08I mean
13:09my mother certainly didn't want me to come and and my father left it up to me he said there's
13:14this school
13:14that says they'll have you if you pass the exam and do you want to go and I don't know
13:19for some
13:20reason I said yes and and and I arrived in London en route to rugby in January of 1961 and
13:30I'm a boy from
13:31the tropics. It was cold. It was really cold. And you were 16? 13 and a half. Oh really? Yeah
13:39so my
13:40first impression was just terrible weather. And then at rugby I didn't I really didn't have a good
13:48time. I mean I had in one way I had a very good time. I remember being very well taught.
13:54I mean I
13:54had there were a lot of teachers you know in the way that you have teachers that you remember all
13:58your
13:58life. I had quite a few of those. Did you have preconceptions of what England was all about having
14:04read a lot of English novels? Yeah I mean I thought I knew where I was going you know I'd
14:10read all these
14:10books you know Arthur Ransom's Swallows and Amazons you know all that kind of thing. But when I got to
14:17rugby I it was the first time I in my life that I'd been made to feel not exactly like
14:24an outsider but
14:25like an like an other like somebody else's other you know not part of the the group. Were you reminded
14:32constantly that you were an outsider that you were an immigrant? Yeah and also you know I was I was
14:40foreign that was not good. I was really bad at games that was extra not good.
14:46And and there was bits of racism you know I did on a couple of occasions we had these little
14:52cubicles which were called studies and I came into the little cubicle and found a kind of racist
14:57slogan written on the wall. About you? Yeah and on at least two occasions I came in and found that
15:04somebody had been into my room and torn up my essay that I'd written. So that was hard to deal
15:11with.
15:12You went to Cambridge and you studied history. Were you already writing or did you have ambitions?
15:18Yeah I had ambitions I hadn't written anything really worth reading. I was more involved in student
15:24theatre than in than in student magazines. I did do a bit of writing for the the student newspaper at
15:30Cambridge it's called Varsity and I did write a bit for that. But my great piece of good fortune was
15:36that
15:37I met E.M. Forster. I was at King's College and he was he was in residence there. He wasn't
15:43my best
15:44friend but I met him a few times and he's very open and accessible you know to students and of
15:51course his love of India meant that he was extra interested in me and I finally did kind of shyly
15:59confess to him that I had thought I might try and write something and he was very very encouraging
16:05and I've always remembered that. You must have known you had some kind of talent for writing because
16:11after Cambridge you worked as a copywriter for a big advertising agency I think for about 10 years.
16:16So what effect did that job have on the fiction that by that time you must have been writing?
16:21I was writing yeah I mean well first of all it it paid the rent you know while I while
16:25I was working
16:26at home on on books but what it did give me I think was it gave me real discipline
16:35because you know in advertising you can't wait for the muse to descend.
16:38So if the if the client is showing up at 2.30 on Thursday you've got to be ready at
16:442.30 on
16:45Thursday and you've got to have something that he wants to buy. So that you know just sit down and
16:50do the job approach which actually I would probably have learned from journalism as well. But advertising
16:58certainly gave me that that discipline to treat writing just as the job you're doing and get it done.
17:03And that lasts to this day then does it? I mean you set yourself deadlines you have a sort of
17:07a working
17:07day and you set the clock. I have really well developed writing discipline. You were responsible
17:13for some very memorable ad campaigns in the 1970s. Aero chocolate bars and also there was one for
17:21fresh cream cakes. Were you particularly proud of those campaigns?
17:25Yeah they lasted a long time. Naughty but nice was the cream cakes campaign. That was the milk
17:32marketing board? Yes. They were selling cakes. They were selling cream cakes yes. Naughty but nice.
17:37Naughty but nice, yeah. Yeah, the way these cream cakes flaunt themselves, it's enough to lead a girl astray.
17:49And I remember they were very reluctant to accept the idea because they thought people were telling
17:57them that cream cakes made you fat. I tried to get them to focus on the but nice part. Anyway
18:05it lasted
18:06for a long time that campaign. And the chocolate bar, the Aero where I came up with these bubble words,
18:12you know, irresistible bubble. Adore a bubble.
18:16Unforget a bubble, that's what you are. Unforget a bubble, milk chocolate bar.
18:27Why is Aero so incredible? Chocolate bubbles oh so incredible. You'll find Aero. Unforget a bubble too.
18:41I mean I remember growing up with those campaigns. I mean that's um...
18:45Signs on a door saying avail a bubble inside, etc. Easy once you've got one of those things which
18:52writes itself the moment you've had the idea. Do those ideas come because the deadline is looming
18:57and it forces the imagination into a kind of critical point of thinking?
19:01That happened because it wasn't actually my account Aero. It was a friend of mine's and he was stuck.
19:07And so I sort of brainstormed with him. And while we were having terrible ideas he got so worked up
19:14that he stammered. And he said impossible bubble. And I thought ding. And I started writing bubble words.
19:24Wow. Inspiration from a speech impediment.
19:26Yes. Adore a bubble. Delect a bubble.
19:31Going back to the idea of migration, how much did some of your early experiences
19:37in the UK feed in to the writing of the Satanic Verses? In which one of the protagonists of course,
19:42like you came from India, was at an English public school and then lives the immigrant life in London?
19:49A lot of the time in the 70s, I did a lot of voluntary work in race relations. I was
19:56involved
19:57mainly with a thing called the Camden Commission for Racial Equality. And it was involved in the life
20:03of the primarily Asian community in North London. A lot of it Bangladeshi. So I had quite a detailed
20:11knowledge of what was going on inside the Asian community at that time. And in the Satanic Verses,
20:18when I'm a lot of which is about Asian immigrants in London, a lot of that came out of the
20:25knowledge
20:25that I'd gained through that work. And, you know, the 80s, the racial situation in London was much more
20:33tense than it is now, perhaps. And in the middle of the book, the largest section of that novel is
20:43a section called a city visible, but unseen. And what I meant is to say, you know, this, these
20:49communities, you know, I know where they live, I can take you to those streets, but somehow nobody's
20:54paying attention. And again, that's different now. But, but it was like that then, it felt like a very
21:02unexamined, you know, ignored community. Places like Brick Lane and Southall and Wembley, parts,
21:11parts of London, which had large Asian communities.
21:14Of course, the Satanic Verses is so associated with the fatwa decreed by the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran.
21:22In the case of the writer who's offended many in the Muslim world, Ayatollah Khomeini has said he
21:28should be executed. He's Salman Rushdie, the British author of a book called Satanic Verses.
21:34According to Tehran Radio, Ayatollah Khomeini has sentenced him and all those involved in the
21:40book's publication to death. Is it frustrating for you that that book, the Satanic Verses, was
21:45almost overshadowed as a work of literature? Yeah, and also it gave the, what happened to it gave
21:51people the wrong impression of the kind of book it is. You know, because really what I thought,
21:56I still think, is that it's my novel about London, you know, and that's not how most people would
22:02think of it. Because the religion part of it, the dream sequences, are a relatively small part of this
22:09quite big novel, like 70 pages out of a 550 page novel. So, and I thought, first of all,
22:17they're dream sequences. Secondly, the religion is not called Islam, the prophet is not called
22:24Muhammad, and the city in which it takes place is not called Makkah. And I thought,
22:28this is what we call fiction. You know, you start from a real source, and you reimagine it,
22:33and you tell a story. So it really didn't ever occur to me that anything on the scale of what
22:41happened. Well, of course, that book changed your life, the fatwa changed your life, you had to go
22:46into police hiding, live with police protection for around a decade. And then you moved to New York.
22:51So this is the second migration. In fact, in New York, your life became easier in a way,
22:56it became freer, you became more of a public figure. What effect do you think did that freedom
23:01have on the writing that you were doing in New York? Well, it just took away a kind of negative
23:05pressure. You know, I mean, in England, in those years of the police protection,
23:11I mean, that was really very stressful and had to be, it was an effort to put that to one
23:18side and
23:19write a book. But in New York, that just wasn't there. So it was easier to go back to being
23:27the person that I always thought I had been.
23:30You said after writing your memoir, Joseph Anton, that you long to return to some wildly
23:37fantastical fiction. And having just written Knife, your account, your memoir,
23:43of surviving that brutal attack in August 2022, do you now have a similar hunger to return to
23:49fabulous fiction?
23:50So you think fiction, yeah. I mean, I don't actually know what the next book is at this
23:54precise moment. I don't really have it in my head.
23:57But is that sense of the, you know, the real and the reportage that you did in Knife,
24:01does that drive you into kind of ever wilder imaginative?
24:04Yes, do something, do the opposite. Yeah.
24:06Because, you know, one of the things is, when I first thought about becoming a writer,
24:11the last thing on my mind was to write about myself.
24:14You know, I had absolutely no interest in doing that. I wanted to make things up.
24:21You know, I wanted to make up stories and tell them.
24:24Now that I've written two books about myself, it's more than enough.
24:29How have your injuries and survival itself affected
24:35your writing both on a practical and emotional level?
24:39Well, practical, it's harder, you know, because one eye is harder than two.
24:43And one and a half hands is harder than two hands.
24:46You know, so that makes everything slower.
24:50As far as in terms of what I write, I just hope it doesn't get in the way of what
24:56I do next.
24:57You know, I just want to do something completely different.
25:00Was writing knife cathartic for you, though?
25:02It was not exactly cathartic, but it was a way of handling it.
25:08It was a way of dealing with, you know, I feel now as if I've kind of
25:12dealt with the subject.
25:14Was it something you felt you had to do rather than you really wanted to do?
25:17Yeah, I didn't want to do it.
25:20And then I discovered that there was no alternative,
25:24because it was just in the way of everything else, this subject.
25:28I thought the only way of getting past this is to go through it.
25:31And so let's go through it.
25:34You've spoken in the past about how you found it important to remain visible in New York,
25:39you know, to be a parent, to reclaim your life after years in hiding.
25:44You know, you were seen out and about, and we saw you in cameos in W1A here at the BBC.
25:53And in Curb Your Enthusiasm, and also Bridget Jones's Diary.
25:57No, I mean, Bridget happened because Helen Fielding is an old friend.
26:01And the funny thing is that in the novel, which I had not read at the time, it's Julian Burns,
26:08not me, who is accosted by Bridget Jones.
26:11I am the intellectual eagle of everyone else here.
26:16It's like a whole theory of short fiction and of the novella, you know?
26:20And of course, the problem with Martin's definition of the novella is that it really only applies to him.
26:27That doesn't sound like Martin. Not.
26:31I mean, I mean, I could be wrong. What do you think?
26:36Ah, do you know where the toilets are?
26:43How important was comedy in helping you to endure the situation?
26:48No, very important. You know, I mean, I think I'm kind of fortunate in that I have,
26:54kind of have a sense of humor. You know, I think it's been helpful.
26:58And I do think that humor in a way is an answer to fanaticism.
27:05You know, it's difficult to imagine a funny fascist.
27:13Things are kind of contradictions in terms.
27:15So, also, humor is a thing. Laughter is a thing we do together, you know, that we laugh together.
27:24Can you imagine taking on those sort of comic cameos now, though, given what's happened to you?
27:28Oh, I don't see why not. I mean, I'm a frustrated actor.
27:33It's the only other thing that I ever wanted to do.
27:36What drives you on creatively?
27:39Just what else would I do?
27:42I have no other talent. But I've always thought that writing has been, for me,
27:50my way of understanding the world.
27:54Which is to say, my way of understanding the world is to tell stories about it.
27:57You know, and the world still needs understanding, including by me.
28:04So, I mean, this book is the 22nd book.
28:09I mean, there's certainly not 22 more, but I hope there might be one or two.
28:14You've talked about how important comedy is to you, you know, to keeping you going.
28:18And there's a lot of comedy in your books.
28:20But it does strike me how incredibly upbeat you are, given everything that has happened.
28:26Yeah, I don't know. It's...
28:28The resilience.
28:30I think I discovered that I was more resilient than I would have believed myself to be.
28:36You know, that's to say, if you had told me in advance the following things are going to happen,
28:40how do you think you'll deal with them?
28:43I would not have bet on myself to do that well, you know.
28:47But it turns out that I'm tougher than I thought.
28:51And do you think that is as a result of having such a near-death experience?
28:56Yeah, I think certainly...
28:58I mean, one of the things my editor in New York said to me
29:01when I was first talking about writing this book,
29:04he said, you know, very few people have the experience that you've had,
29:09which is to get this close to death and then come back from it.
29:13He said, so tell the story.
29:16And so I did.
29:17Keep telling stories, Salman.
29:20Thank you very much indeed for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:27Thank you very much indeed for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:27Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:28Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:29Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:40Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:41Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:42Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:42Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:43Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:43Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:43Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:43Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:45Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:46Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
29:47Thank you very much for sharing your cultural life with us.
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