Best Books To Read By Salman Rushdie: Add To Your Reader's Digest List

Salman Rushdie is one of the world's most acclaimed yet most debated authors. He has won several awards, and his sixteen fiction novels have been translated into over forty languages. Some of his fictional works include  Midnight's Children, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1981, The Satanic Verses, Shame and more. His latest work is Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, which was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. If you want to read Salman Rushdie but don't know where to begin, then this guide will help you find the best books to read and start your journey into knowledge.

The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories

This quintet of stories by Salman Rushdie spans three countries in which he has made his work, which are India, England and the US. One of the stories is “In the South”, in which Rushdie introduces a pair of quarrelsome old men and their private tragedy at a moment of national calamity. Another story, “The Musician of Kahani”, is about a musical prodigy from the Mumbai neighbourhood who uses her magical gifts to wreak devastation on the wealthy family she marries into. In “Late”, the ghost of a Cambridge don enlists the help of a lonely student to enact revenge upon the tormentor of his lifetime. The Eleventh Hour book revolves around life and death, legacy and identity, with the penetrating insight and boundless imagination of Salman Rushdie.

Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

In this fantasy novel, Salman Rushdie talks about a metaphorical storm that is about to hit New York City. The storm has created an eerie strangeness in the town. The book features a very down-to-earth gardener who is working in the city when he feels that his feet can no longer touch the ground, and a baby who has been abandoned at the mayor's office spots corruption with her very small presence. In another setting, the author talks about a gold digger who is soon going to be prompted to fight forces far stronger than ever imagined. 'Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights' is a satirical story that is full of jaw-dropping truths that you have to face, complete with rivalries, betrayals, drama and redemption.

Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder

In August 2022, Salman Rushdie was attacked by a man with a knife when he was standing onstage at the Chautauqua Institution, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm. The attack resulted in the loss of sight in one eye, severe liver damage, and a paralysed hand. In this book, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey toward physical recovery and the healing that was made possible by the love and support of his wife, Eliza, his family, his army of doctors and physical therapists, and his community of readers worldwide. This book is a reminder of literature's capacity to make sense of the unthinkable, an intimate and life-affirming meditation on life, loss, love, and art. It tells the reader about how to find the strength to stand up again.

Quichotte

This book is a modern, metafictional retelling of Cervantes' Don Quixote. Inspired by Cervantes' classic, Sam DuChamp, mediocre writer of spy thrillers, creates Quichotte, an ageing travelling salesman who falls in impossible love with a TV star. Just as Cervantes wrote Don Quixote to satirise the culture of his time, Rushdie takes the reader on a wild ride through a country on the verge of moral and spiritual collapse. And with the kind of storytelling magic that is the hallmark of his work, the fully realised lives of DuChamp and Quichotte intertwine in a profoundly human quest for love and a wickedly entertaining portrait of an age in which fact is so often indiscernible from fiction.

The Golden House

In this book, Salman Rushdie talks about the time when powerful real-estate tycoon Nero Golden immigrates to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult children assume new identities, taking 'Roman' names, and move into a grand mansion in downtown Manhattan. Arriving shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, he and his sons, each extraordinary in his own right, quickly establish themselves at the apex of New York society. Rushdie tells the story of the Golden family from the point of view of their Manhattanite neighbour and confidant, René, an aspiring filmmaker who finds in the Goldens the perfect subject. The author spins the story of the American zeitgeist over the last eight years, including the rise of the birther movement, the Tea Party, Gamergate and identity politics, the backlash against political correctness and more. “The Golden House” is the ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies.

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Conclusion

We have picked five of the best books by the author Salman Rushdie. Apart from these, there is a wide range of books you can find online by the same author, such as “The Satanic Verses”, which was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, “Shame”, in which Rushdie depicts contemporary New York City as the epicentre of globalisation and all of its tragic flaws and more. You can also find books on similar themes to Rushdie by other authors.