Salman Rushdie, "The Golden House"

Sir Salman Rushdie has been a towering figure in contemporary literature since his second novel, Midnight’s Children, won the Booker Prize in 1981. In his thirteenth novel, timeless questions of good and evil bump up against 21st-century issues of identity and immigration. The narrative is told by an anonymous filmmaker whose project is to discover the truth about the mysterious Golden family of Greenwich Village. The patriarch, Nero, is a real-estate tycoon; his sons are a recluse, an artist, and a charmer hiding something even from himself. Slowly, their secrets, betrayals, and brushes with both magic and violence surface. Meanwhile, the city around them erupts in political turmoil during the campaign of a presidential candidate known only as The Joker.

Rushdie is in conversation with Aminatta Forna, an award-winning novelist, essay writer and memoirist. She is currently Lannan Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University.

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Produced by Tom Warren