This page is for all those people who want to know how to go about writing an essay on Salman Rushdie. Most of you tend to be high-school or college students working on a term paper. Well, here are some helpful hints.
Get yourself a copy of Imaginary Homelands, a collection of essays by Rushdie on a slew of different topics. There’s a lot of biographical material, ruminations on political and social events/movements, clues to literary predecesors, and just general interesting stuff there.
If you’re writing about Rushdie the person, or the fatwa, you need to read some of the writing on the fatwa. There are a number of links from these paes, and there are references to published material in the bibliography. You will also want to read Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Which is the book Rushdie published soon after the fatwa was declared, and is a rather good read.
If you’re writing about Rushdie’s influences, his relation to South America and latin american literature, or his political leanings, you want to read A Jaguar’s smile. Rushdie’s account of his visit to Nicaragua. For some material on Spain in Rushdie’s ken, read A Moor’s Last Sigh which is partly set in Spain, and just generally uses the metaphor of the moorish period in Spain to great effect.
If you’re writing about the sub-continent in Rushdie’s imagination, you need to read Midnight’s Children, Shame, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and The ground beneath her feet.
You will need to hit the library for critical material, some of which is listed in the bibliography.
Hope this helps.