Languages of Truth
Essays 2003-2020
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to Wish List failed.
Please try again later
Remove from Wish List failed.
Please try again later
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 30 days of Standard free
$8.99/mo after trial ends. Cancel anytime
Buy Now for $28.53
-
Narrated by:
-
Raj Ghatak
-
Salman Rushdie
-
By:
-
Salman Rushdie
About this listen
Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
Salman Rushdie is celebrated as “a master of perpetual storytelling” (The New Yorker), illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.
Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2020, Languages of Truth chronicles Rushdie’s intellectual engagement with a period of momentous cultural shifts. Immersing the reader in a wide variety of subjects, he delves into the nature of storytelling as a human need, and what emerges is, in myriad ways, a love letter to literature itself. Rushdie explores 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.
Enlivened on every page by Rushdie’s signature wit and dazzling voice, Languages of Truth offers the author’s most piercingly analytical views yet on the evolution of literature and culture even as he takes us on an exhilarating tour of his own exuberant and fearless imagination.
Critic Reviews
Praise for Languages of Truth
“Mesmerizing . . . Rushdie’s writing is erudite and full of sympathy, brimming with insight and wit: ‘Literature has never lost sight of what our quarrelsome world is trying to force us to forget. Literature rejoices in contradiction.’ Rushdie’s fans will be delighted.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Wide-ranging nonfiction pieces by the distinguished novelist, unified by his commitment to artistic freedom and his adamant opposition to censorship in any form. . . . This collection . . . showcases his generous spirit, dedicated to illuminating the work of fellow artists and defending their right to unfettered creativity. . . . Engagingly passionate, and endlessly informative: a literary treat.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Praise for Salman Rushdie
“He is a legend. . . . His is not only an enviable talent, it’s a revelatory mind [displaying] a profound knowledge of history, culture, human frailty, and triumph.”—Toni Morrison
“One of the greatest writers of our age . . . a giant of literature.”—Neil Gaiman
“Rushdie is our Scheherazade.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
“A master of metamorphosis—transforming life, art and language in the subterranean maze of his imagination.”—Don DeLillo
“A storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Mesmerizing . . . Rushdie’s writing is erudite and full of sympathy, brimming with insight and wit: ‘Literature has never lost sight of what our quarrelsome world is trying to force us to forget. Literature rejoices in contradiction.’ Rushdie’s fans will be delighted.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Wide-ranging nonfiction pieces by the distinguished novelist, unified by his commitment to artistic freedom and his adamant opposition to censorship in any form. . . . This collection . . . showcases his generous spirit, dedicated to illuminating the work of fellow artists and defending their right to unfettered creativity. . . . Engagingly passionate, and endlessly informative: a literary treat.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Praise for Salman Rushdie
“He is a legend. . . . His is not only an enviable talent, it’s a revelatory mind [displaying] a profound knowledge of history, culture, human frailty, and triumph.”—Toni Morrison
“One of the greatest writers of our age . . . a giant of literature.”—Neil Gaiman
“Rushdie is our Scheherazade.”—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian
“A master of metamorphosis—transforming life, art and language in the subterranean maze of his imagination.”—Don DeLillo
“A storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air.”—The New York Times Book Review
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.