Salman Rushdie, the writer marked for death by the Ayatollah of Iran for writing The Satanic Verses, is working on a new novel set in contemporary America.
His new book, The Golden House, is a thriller set against the backdrop of modern-day American culture. It covers the eight-year Obama presidency and incorporates the cultural zeitgeist. It includes the rise of the conservative Tea Party movement, 2014s GamerGate hashtag campaign, social media, identity politics, and the ongoing culture war against political correctness.
In other words, its the modern world through the lens of Salman Rushdie, an author who received numerous death threats and even attempts on his life after he penned a novel critical of Islam.
Many stores refused to carry the book following its publication in 1988, and those that did were targeted by terrorists with firebombs and explosives.
The Iranian government put out a hit on Rushdie, which lasted until 1998, calling on jihadists and their allies to take the authors life.
In more recent years, Rushdie has called for the defense of freedom of speech. As the target of assassination attempts over his ideas and writing, the Booker Prize-winning author is uniquely intimate with the subject.
During the election last year, Rushdie spoke out against the furor over the pro-Trump chalk slogans in Emory University in what became known as #TheChalkening. Campuses that saw the rising incidences of chalk messages banned the calcium carbonate writing tool.
Rushdie called the dust-up silly and said there was no reason for art to be politically correct.
When people say, I believe in free speech but , then they dont believe in free speech, he said. The whole point about free speech is that it upsets people.
Its very easy to defend the right of people whom you agree with or that you are indifferent to, Rushdie said. The defense [of free speech] begins when someone says something that you dont like.
There are no safe spaces against offensive ideas, said Rushdie.
Rushdie has come to lose his confidence in the progressive leftincluding those who once defended his controversial book. Speaking in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Rushdie expressed dismay at the leftist protests that followed the PEN writers association to honor the fallen artists and writers.
Speaking to French magazine LExpress, Rushdie said that people learned the wrong lessons from the threats he faced in the 80s and 90s.
Instead of realizing that we need to oppose these attacks on freedom of expression, we thought that we need to placate them with compromise and renunciation.
Ive since had the feeling that, if the attacks against The Satanic Verses had taken place today, these people would not have defended me, and would have used the same arguments against me, accusing me of insulting an ethnic and cultural minority, said Rushdie. We are living in the darkest time I have ever known.
In Rushdies new book, the main villain is described as a ruthlessly ambitious, narcissistic, media-savvy villain sporting makeup and colored hair. Make what you will of that.
The books publishing director at Jonathan Cape, Michal Shavit, describes The Golden House as being about identity, truth, terror, and lies for a new world order of alternate truths. Its out this September.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken mediacritic. You can reach him through social media at@stillgray on Twitterand onFacebook.
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Salman Rushdie's New Novel is About Political Correctness and the ... - Heat Street