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Salman Rushdie's Reading List

The author, most recently, of “Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights” says that more or less everything by Christopher Hitchens makes him laugh: “The laughter is what I miss most about the Hitch.”

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By the Book: Salman Rushdie (2015)

NYT By the Book column (2015-09-17).

Source: www.nytimes.com

Cover of Between the World and Me
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates · 2015 · Buy on Amazon
"“Between the World and Me,” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which I just finished and which impressed me"
Cover of The White Album
The White Album
Joan Didion · Buy on Amazon
"“The White Album,” by Joan Didion, which is great to rediscover, and as good as I remembered it being"
Cover of Humboldt’s Gift
Humboldt’s Gift
Saul Bellow · Buy on Amazon
"“Humboldt’s Gift,” by Saul Bellow, which seems to be on the night stand more or less permanently."
Cover of The Code of the Woosters
The Code of the Woosters
P. G. Wodehouse · Buy on Amazon
"P. G. Wodehouse’s “Code of the Woosters,” which also contains the speech which Christopher Hitchens (and I) believed to be the greatest anti-Nazi diatribe in English literature"
Cover of A Passage to India
A Passage to India
E. M. Forster · Buy on Amazon
"“A Passage to India,” by E. M. Forster"
Cover of Clear Light of Day
Clear Light of Day
Anita Desai · Buy on Amazon
"“Clear Light of Day,” by Anita Desai"
Cover of Maximum City
Maximum City
Suketu Mehta · 2004 · Buy on Amazon
"“Maximum City,” by Suketu Mehta."
Cover of The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka · 1915 · Buy on Amazon
"Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”"
Cover of The Adventures of Augie March
The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow · Buy on Amazon
"Bellow, “The Adventures of Augie March”"
Cover of Fictions
Fictions
Jorge Luis Borges · Buy on Amazon
"Borges, “Fictions”"
Cover of The Baron in the Trees
The Baron in the Trees
Italo Calvino · Buy on Amazon
"Calvino, “The Baron in the Trees”"
Cover of The Tin Drum
The Tin Drum
Günter Grass · Buy on Amazon
"Grass, “The Tin Drum”"
Cover of One Hundred Years of Solitude
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez · Buy on Amazon
"García Márquez, “One Hundred Years of Solitude”"
Cover of The Bloody Chamber
The Bloody Chamber
Angela Carter · Buy on Amazon
"Angela Carter, “The Bloody Chamber”"
Cover of The Emperor
The Emperor
Ryszard Kapuściński · Buy on Amazon
"Ryszard Kapuściński’s “The Emperor”"
Cover of The Orchid Thief
The Orchid Thief
Susan Orlean · Buy on Amazon
"Susan Orlean’s “The Orchid Thief”"
Cover of Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Katherine Boo · Buy on Amazon
"Katherine Boo’s “Behind the Beautiful Forevers.”"

Favorite books (2023)

Favorite books recommended by Salman Rushdie, as compiled by radicalreads.com. Source article: https://radicalreads.com/salman-rushdie-favorite-books/.

Source: radicalreads.com

The Master And Margarita
Mikhail Bulgakov (also rec’d by David Bowie & Patti Smith ) · Buy on Amazon
"The Devil comes to Moscow and, of course, makes trouble, accompanied by a cat shooting six-guns and an associate who disappears when he turns sideways. But Satan also helps the Master, a tortured writer, recover a manuscript he’d written and burned. One of the greatest Russian novels. Stalin didn’t like it."
The Bloody Cham
Angela Carter · Buy on Amazon
"Carter’s sensual, erotic retellings of fairy tales and folk tales blend Snow White, Red Riding Hood, and Beauty (of ‘Beauty and the Beast’) into shape-shifting creations that are Carter’s own. A girl attacked by a wolf can love the wolf or even become a wolf herself; the beauty can be beastly, too."
Cover of Riddley Walker
Riddley Walker
Russell Hoban · Buy on Amazon
"This unjustly forgotten 1980 novel is unlike anything else: Its portrait of a world after a nuclear holocaust — the explosion of the ‘1 Big 1’ — is written in language that’s brilliantly fractured, as if a bomb has exploded there as well."
The Nonexistent Knight
Italo Calvino · Buy on Amazon
"This is a fable, set in the time of Charlemagne, about an empty suit of armor that believes itself to be a knight and keeps itself going by willpower and strict adherence to the rules of chivalry. The other fables in Calvino’s Our Ancestors trilogy are just as good."
Pedro Páramo
Juan Rulfo · Buy on Amazon
"Jorge Luis Borges thought this short, hypnotic novel to be one of the best ever written, and Gabriel García Márquez said it freed him to imagine the world of One Hundred Years of Solitude . A man is told by his dying mother to go find his father. He embarks on the journey and falls into a nightmarish world that may be populated entirely by ghosts."
The Sirens of Titan
Kurt Vonnegut · Buy on Amazon
"This is a real delight. Among its leading characters is a man who, along with his dog, accidentally enters a chrono-synclastic infundibulum and gets stretched out across space and time. The inhabitants of Tralfamadore meanwhile distort the whole of human history to bring home one of their own. (The Great Wall of China and the Kremlin are messages from Tralfamadore. Draw your own conclusions.)"

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