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, 2014’s GamerGate hashtag campaign, social media, identity politics, and the ongoing culture war against political correctness.
In other words, it’s 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 author’s 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 don’t believe in free speech,” he said. “The whole point about free speech is that it upsets people.”
“It’s 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 don’t like.”
“There are no safe spaces against offensive ideas,” said Rushdie.
Rushdie has come to lose his confidence in the progressive left—including 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 L’Express, 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.”
“I’ve 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 Rushdie’s 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 book’s 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.” It’s out this September.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.
