The Book Club: Salman Rushdie on the Age of Anything-Can-Happen

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🗓️ 22 April 2020

⏱️ 61 minutes

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Summary

‘Things that would have seemed utterly improbable now happen on a daily basis’, Sir Salman Rushdie said to Sam when they spoke in an interview for the Spectator's 10,000th edition. Sam met Salman in New York a few weeks ago, before coronavirus struck down the city. This episode is a recording of that interview, where they discuss everything from his latest book Quichotte, to his relationship with his father, who we learn made up the surname 'Rushdie', and how he feels about The Satanic Verses now. Sam's full interview is out in this Thursday's issue.

The Book Club is a series of literary interviews and discussions on the latest releases in the world of publishing, from poetry through to physics. Presented by Sam Leith, The Spectator's Literary Editor. Hear past episodes here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Book Club is brought to you in association with Charles Stanley Community,
0:03.6	providing our clients, colleagues and friends with practical supporting conversation.
0:07.6	Find out more at Charles Stanley Community.
0:15.5	Hello and welcome to Spectator's Book Club podcast.
0:19.0	I'm Sam Lee, the literary editor of The Spectator.
0:21.4	And what you're about to hear is a recording of a conversation I had in New York with Sir Salman
0:25.9	Rohtdy a few very long weeks ago, ahead of an interview that we're going to publish in our
0:31.7	10,000th anniversary issue. I hope you enjoy it. I always get at least one, really savage review saying that my literary
0:42.4	talent was in free fall, things like that. Anyway, but... Anyway, but it's not... But on the whole,
0:48.8	it's not James Wood settling school again. No, it wasn't James. No, I mean, Martin Amish has this nice phrase where he says, when you publish a book, he says, you either get away with it or you don't get away with it. No, I think also he came out, that lovely line that said all the writer Ray wants to read his 20,000 words of closely argued praise.
1:10.3	Anyway, so it was all right.
1:11.6	It was a good publication.
1:13.4	But Kishat is a good place to start, if I can.
1:16.0	I mean, you write in the book,
1:17.7	or one of the many sort of narrators
1:20.2	or writer figures writes to the book,
1:22.0	that we're living in the age of anything can happen.
1:24.7	Yeah.
1:25.1	And can I ask you what did you mean by that particularly?
1:28.0	I mean, what... Well, what I meant is that things that would be, would have seemed utterly
1:32.8	improbable now happen on a daily basis. I mean, I remember, actually, Ian McKeown was over here.
1:38.9	We had, we had dinner together, and we said to each other that if we had presented to our publishers the plot of the last
	...

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