LIVE from NYPL: Languages of Truth: Salman Rushdie with Téa Obreht

The Booker Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author discusses a newly collected edition of nonfiction writing, much of it in print for the first time ever.

Salman Rushdie is celebrated as a storyteller of the highest order, illuminating difficult truths about history, religion, cultures, and politics. In his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together essays, criticism, and speeches written between 2003 and 2020 that focus on his relationship with the written word. Languages of Truth chronicles Rushdie's intellectual engagement with a period of momentous cultural shifts, exploring what the work of authors from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty, and Toni Morrison mean to him, whether on the page or in person. He delves deep into the nature of "truth," revels in the vibrant malleability of language and the creative lines that can join art and life, and looks anew at migration, multiculturalism, and censorship.

Rushdie speaks with novelist Téa Obreht about the evolution of literature and culture, and of his own imagination.

The program will be streamed live on this page. If you encounter any issues, please join us on NYPL's YouTube channel.

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Salman Rushdie suggests these titles for further reading:

• Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo — NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books ; Bookshare
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe — NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books ; Bookshare
• Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift — NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books ; Bookshare
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov — NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books ; Bookshare
• Malone Dies by Samuel Beckett — NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books
• Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison — NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books ; Bookshare
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin — NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books ; Bookshare
• The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter — NYPL Catalog ; Bookshare
• History: A Novel by Elsa Morante— NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books ; Bookshare
• Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai — NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books ; Bookshare

Also check out these titles by Téa Obreht:

• Inland by Téa Obreht — NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books ; Bookshare
• The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht — NYPL Catalog ; NYPL Talking Books ; Bookshare

Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen novels—Luka and the Fire of Life; Grimus; Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker); Shame; Satanic Verses; Haroun and the Sea of Stories; The Moor's Last Sigh; The Ground Beneath Her Feet; Fury; Shalimar the Clown; The Enchantress of Florence; Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights; The Golden House; and Quichotte—and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of nonfiction—Joseph Anton; The Jaguar Smile; Imaginary Homelands; and Step Across This Line—and co-edited two anthologies, Mirror Work and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature. 

Téa Obreht was born in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia, and grew up in Cyprus and Egypt before eventually immigrating to the United States. Her debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction, and was a 2011 National Book Award finalist and an international bestseller. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Non-Required Reading, and has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, Vogue, Esquire and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many others. Her second book, Inland, was an instant bestseller and a finalist for the 2020 Dylan Thomas Prize. She was the recipient of the Rona Jaffe fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at The New York Public Library, and a 2016 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty. She splits time between Wyoming and Texas, and currently serves as the Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at Texas State University in San Marcos. 

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