Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1988 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a storyteller. His most famous stories are about the teeming

confused world of modern India and her neighbor Pakistan. Born into a Muslim family in Bombay, he was educated here in England where he now lives,

from where he eyes the country of his birth, trying to discover in her and perhaps in himself an identity which history has made difficult.

Winner of the Booker Prize in 1981 for midnight's children,

he's established himself as one of the most prominent writers of the English language today.

He is Salmane Rushdi.

Salma, has English always been your first language or has it become so?

No, I wasn't born speaking

English I was born speaking Urdu which is basically the language of India's Muslims and

I started learning English when I was five because I was sent to an English medium school. So it's not a first

language but by now I have to admit that my English is is better than my

it's better than most peoples too I think better than most English people. Well I remember when my first novel came out I was at

some friend's house and they and they had a friend round who saw a copy of my book

lying around and they saw the name Grimus and then saw my name and looked at me so did a

double take it said do you write this I said well yes and he said well it's in

English and I said well yes and they said well was that very difficult for you and I said well yes

it was but I don't think that's what he meant do you think in English yes I do

when I'm here and I think a curious switch happens if I go back to India or Pakistan for any length of time

It usually takes a few weeks actually and then my dreams start changing language

I find myself dreaming much more in order than in English.

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