Set against the bizarre, surreal, and often frightening backdrop of current American culture and politics, Sir Salman Rushdie’s latest novel The Golden House thrillingly speaks to a world where objective truth is the crumbling social foundation that we’re only now on the brink of.
René, the narrator of Salman Rushdie’s “complex and witty fable” (The Guardian) lives across the street from Nero Golden—the patriarch of a family that moves to a grand and gated apartment in New York City just as Barack Obama is elected president. The book tracks the family members, named for gods and kings, through Obama’s two terms, up to the present day. Rushdie brings us to the moment when a recognizable comic book villain named the Joker begins his campaign to be leader of the free world.
Rushdie’s novels, like the Booker Prize-winning Midnight’s Children, are known and beloved for their magic twists of narrative, social commentary, and political satire. The Golden House “marks Salman Rushdie’s triumphant and exciting return to realism,” says the publisher. “The result is a modern epic of love and terrorism, loss and reinvention—a powerful, timely story told with the daring and panache that make Salman Rushdie a force of light in our dark new age.”
In a recent interview with The Globe & Mail, Rushdie explained that “the novel is about human beings in a time of insanity.” Whatever the time or place, Rushdie’s humanity comes through, in his books as well as in his live speaking events.
The Golden House is out today from Penguin Random House. Sir Rushdie will also be at the Toronto Reference Library on the 21st of September as part of the Appel Salon Programming.
