My favorite quote, "The word 'translation' comes, etymologically, from the Latin for 'bearing across'. Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained." "Translated men" what exactly is that? It kept me wondering for quite sometime. A transactional activity where you gain and lose? But what do you lose? Originality? What exactly is originality? Originality is nothing but a perception and that's a very existential question.

Helped a LOT with my MA thesis!

This was my first encounter with Salman Rushdie, and definitely not the last one. "Imaginary Homelands" is a set of articles written by Rushdie between 1981 and 1991. It includes a wide range of different topics, from the politician situations, history, economics, to culture and literature. Rushdie has a lot to say and those are wide words, so I had loads to think about during reading this book. I think I made a mistake starting from this particular position, as he sometimes referred to his older books, which I don't know yet. Thus, I think it is better to start from one of his fictions. Those essays and critics are also coming from before 30 years, so not all the topics are that actual or interesting for contemporary reader. For everyone, who already started their jounney with Rushdie. Mine has just begun.

Through Rushdie's thoughts we experience a garden of forking paths.

“The word 'translation' comes, etymologically, from the Latin for 'bearing across'. Having been borne across the world, we are translated men.” Salman Rushdie compares migration to translation- some things get carried across while others are left behind. Rushdie himself has been in the unique position of forever being the migrant, a Muslim in India, an Indian in Pakistan and a brown man in Britain. All his writing is a derivative, in some form or another, of his position as a migrant. It is the gap between the carrying forward and the leaving behind that makes his writing intriguing as well as controversial.

“Sometimes we feel we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.”

Imaginary Homelands is a collection of Rushdie’s essays, seminar papers, articles, reviews published over a decade of his literary life time, 1981-1991. Like any collection of essays it is wide ranging, from the popular to the obscure. The essays deal with varying political, social and literary topics. The reaction to such a book can only be personal and subjective. It is not a story that can be discussed with some degree of detachment. Reading Imaginary Homelands is being engaged in a personal conversation by the author. Rushdie steers the conversation from within the pages while enthralling and vexing the reader in equal measure. There is a greater possibility of the reader being provoked into disagreeing with the author. Rushdie is that kind of a writer. But the greatest power of any book lies in provocation; that which leads to disagreement promotes thought...

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This was just what I needed. Published soon after The Satanic Verses with some fresh references to the Fatwa issued against him, this mostly finds Rushdie earlier in the decade, reviewing books and despairing of Thatcher. It's a document of its time, but it's also a thoroughly readable collection of Rushdie's wisdom and good sense as well as his love of wordplay.

You’re reading a book of book reviews? Michelle asks. Isn’t that BORING? Indeed, it should be, but with a voice like his nothing could ever be boring. In fact, of all the books I’ve been reading I found myself most itching to get back into the pages of this one. It was ideal for breakfast, devourable at (and past) bedtime, and good every hour in between. Full of heartfelt sentiments, soul-satisfying philosophizing, and cheeky wordplay. It is said of some movie actors, “I could listen to them read the phone book.” If such a thing makes sense, I would read the phone book as written by Salman Rushdie. He’s given me countless recommendations for books I now long to read, and he’s managed to entertain me while extolling the virtues (or digging into the faults) of books I have no intention to pick up. As always, he makes you laugh, he makes you think, he makes you want to pick up the torch and take up the battle cry, and at the same time makes you hang back, cast some doubts and rethink what the battle is all about, anyways. An excellent collection of essays.

erudite, engrossing,entertaining

His review of the Attenborough film, Ghandi together with his notes on Satyajit Ray most enlightening.

Can somebody say, "self-absorbed"?

Salman Rushdie is the intellectual par excellence, but it seems that he strains a bit too far on this one, writing essays on everything from Edward Said to the movie Brazil to Maurice Sendak.


I liked a lot of his essays, and I think he's got an amazing, penetrating mind that is able to make perceptive and sharp commentaries on a variety of subjects, but it seems his ego outweighs his mind, and some essays just appear to be a test of how far his intellectual reach can stretch.

I like Salman Ruhdie. I want to read his novels but I don't have chance yet. I just give 2 stars not because what Rushdie has written is bad, but the translation was very poor. They only put 5 out of total 74 essays. Beside that, the editor/proofreader was shit. She is a writer but she can't be a good editor/proofreader. I read it in Indonesia version.

Yeah, I know I shouldn't write my disappointment here, but the translation is not available yet in Goodreads.

The book is a compilation of a number of essays previously published, mostly in the 1980s. Raised as a Moslem in India and having migrated to the UK, he acknowledges that his perspective is as a minority, a Moslem in India, within a minority, an Indian in the UK. Some of the essays are on politics at the time of their writing in India and in the UK, but most cover films and filmmakers and books and authors and of these, those I most enjoyed discussed censorship, Graham Greene, John le Carre, Bruce Chatwin, Stephen Hawking, Gunter Grass and Attenborough’s film Gandhi. However, the highlight of the book were the closing essays discussing the fatwa against him for his authorship of the Satanic Verses, his defence that the book is a work of fiction, his summary of the motif of that book and his discussion thereof with six Moslem scholars.

Of course, the writing is excellent, but the lapse of time from some of the events being analysed and his discussion of some authors not of interest to me was what prevented a rating of 5 stars.