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Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

I'm happy to have as my guest, once again, Salman Rushdie.

But today, it's the writer I think of as the Jin, the genie Rushdie, the one who writes books

for young people, particularly for his sons. The first of these books was Harun and the Sea of

Stories. The new one, just out from Random House, is Luca and the Fire of Life. Well, first of all,

tell me about these sons.

Well, you know, I've been saying to them that I really owe them a debt of gratitude

because in both cases, you know, 20 years apart,

they were the ones who demanded that I do this, you know, and I remember my older son Zaffa saying

to me when I was writing the satanic verses.

He said, why don't you write books that I want to read, which seemed like a completely

legitimate question?

And so I made a deal with them.

I said, well, just let me finish the book I'm writing now and then I'll write one for you. And then, you know, everything that happened happened.

And I felt, first I felt that I ought to keep the promise to him, you know, and that was a motivating

...