A New York Minute

His latest is a hyper-topical American epic set against the storm of contemporary politics. Consummate storyteller and the voice of generation after generation, 70-year-old SALMAN RUSHDIE continues to capture the zeitgeist with an uncensored honesty and searing irreverence, finds SHAHNAZ SIGANPORIA.

- Shahnaz Siganporia

THE FATEFUL CITY of the roaring ’20s in F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the voice of racial inequality in the ’50s in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the backdrop of the feminist wave of the ’60s in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, the hustle of Wall Street in the ’80s in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire Of The Vanities and the excesses of consumerism of the noughties in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho—there is no dearth of the grand New York novel, each marking a particular moment in time and thought. The most recent to join this trope is Salman Rushdie’s latest, The Golden House, a story about a father and his three sons who leave their secret past in Bombay to start afresh in New York.

With the city of transplants facing the uncertainty of the Obama years leading to the despicable world of Trump forming the background, Rushdie marks his 18 years in New York with a realist portrait of America, family, gender and the new world order of bigotry within the cloistered bubble of the rich. In his usual unflinching, truth-telling mode, Rushdie is rightfully brutal and stimulatingly relevant in his gaze on the contemporary. Over a phone conversation, with echoes of New York sirens on his end and New Delhi sirens on mine, the incredibly articulate writer talks about his latest literary offering, how he manages to capture a sort of millennial zeitgeist, and why he feels lobotomised at the moment. Extracts from the interview:

We waited anxiously on what would emerge after the post-9/11 novel, and it seems to be this post-Trump, post-Brexit and, closer to home, post-Modi novel. What does this specific time mean for writers and for you?