Salman Rushdie on Fiction, ISIS, and the War on Pleasure

Listen to this episode of The Moment with guest Salman Rushdie:

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This week on The Moment, Brian Koppelman talks to Salman Rushdie, author of Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses, and Joseph Anton: A Memoir. The two discuss Rushdie’s latest novel, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, the themes of alienation and truth that often lurk within his stories, and why, in a world gone mad, fiction matters. Plus, Rushdie talks about his rocky start as a writer, an unforgettable night at Madison Square Garden, and how religious fascists are waging a war on pleasure.

Topics mentioned on today’s show include:

• Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights by Salman Rushdie
• Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
• Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie
• The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie
• Candide by Voltaire
• Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
• The Arabian Knights: Tales From a Thousand and One Nights
• The animal fables of the Panchatantra
• The Hamzanama
• Ocean of the Streams of Stories
• Grimus by Salman Rushdie
• Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie
• “Salman Rushdie Slams Critics of PEN’s Charlie Hebdo Tribute”
• Tenth of December by George Saunders
• The Illusionist
• “Eisenheim the Illusionist” by Steven Millhauser
• Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
• “One” by U2
• “ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape” by Rukmini Callimachi

People mentioned on today’s show:

• Christopher Hitchens
• Joyce Carol Oates
• Joan Didion
• Ibn Rushd
• Kierkegaard
• Gustave Flaubert
• Thorstein Veblen
• Ian McEwan
• Martin Amis
• Julian Barnes
• Kazuo Ishiguro
• Jane Austen
• Walt Whitman
• Penn Jillette
• Jonathan Franzen
• Steven Millhauser
• William Kennedy
• James Salter
• H.L. Mencken

This episode of The Moment is brought to you by Open Account, a podcast series created by SuChin Pak and Umpqua Bank. Open Account explores, through honest and sometimes comical interviews, our uncomfortable silence around money. Open Account is available now on iTunes.

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Twitter: @BrianKoppelman
iTunes: itunes.com/themoment