Rushdie is one of the world's most brilliant minds and this is a breathtaking collection of his essays, some of the most interesting works I have ever read.

This is Salman Rushdie's second collection of essays, which range from 1992 to 2002. Like his first collection Imaginary Homelands, I do not think that this is essentially reading for anyone but dedicated Rushdie fans, but the collection stands out as a commentary on Rushdie's place in the current literary scene.

For ultimately what pervades this collection is a sense of desperation. During the early 1990s Rushdie didn't want to speak about the controversy of The Satanic Verses and the fatwa, prefering to make the media concentrate on his newer works. However, the two novels which appeared during that time, The Moor’s Last Sigh and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, did not gain large critical or public acceptance, and essentially put Rushdie on the way out of public consciousness and critical esteem. In Step Across This Line Rushdie starts talking about the fatwa and fundamentalist Islam again, and one gets the impression that he is only looking for some way to reach the public again because his latest novels have bombed.

That's not to say some of his insights are not thought-provoking. In "Not About Islam?" he bluntly calls the September 11 attack a manifestation of a sickness indeed widespread in the Muslim world and deplores America's insistence, for the purposes of coalition-building and not rocking the boat, that the attacks have little to do with Islam. He also bemoans the sectarian violence in India, for Rushdie has greatly benefited from mixture and melange--his first big novel Midnight’s Children welded a Western genre with uniquely Indian storytelling--and to see people creating divisions and violence saddens him.

If you've never read Rushdie before, try The Satanic Verses, which is a superb novel full of exciting fantasy and at the same time all too real social criticism. Step Across This Line is an okay read for diehard fans.

Another Audio Book: Highlight is Rushdie's return to India after many years of being denied a visa following the Satanic Verses. Essay on soccer excellent as well. I've heard Rushdie on the radio and enjoy hearing talk about the real world, and that's what this non-fiction collection of essays does. But in the end, this is a series of essays, speechs and short articles. It's like reading the New Yorker. What I need to do is just jump into his fiction. I'm thinking Midnight's Children.

Of varied quality. Rushdie is at his best when discussing India (its writers, its politics, its history), artistic freedom or his own experiences. Occasional pieces on foreign politics are insightful, but primarily not so. Some of the shorter and more shallow pieces could have been culled.

Excelente colección de ensayos y artículos del escritor hindu británico Salman Rushdie que nos demuestra que su talento literario va más allá de sus estupendas novelas. Con un agudo sentido crítico y cáustico los artículos de Rushdie lograr remover hasta las mentes más anquilosadas, sin duda uno de los mejores libros en su género.

I've been meaning to read Rushdie for a while and thought a non-fiction anthology would be a good primer to get a feel for the author. I do thing thing whereupon reading a book that has been hyped too much to me or overexposed, I can't help having the book reviewers, magazine articles, and people's comments in my head while reading. Instead of diving straight into Rushdie's most-known works, I thought I'd take a little side trip. This book did not disappoint, though I had to look up some of the details of his personal life to which he referred in the book.

The only previous exposure (other than popular media) I'd had was the excellent (and sadly OOP) audiobook version of  Haroun and the Sea of Stories, read by the author.

So far, this book a wide-ranging collection of essays, speeches & articles. Some have been more engaging than others (his look at the movie version of The Wizard of Oz was fascinating!), but I'm generally enjoying it & feel more comfortable about moving on to some of his fiction.

I did start feeling a bit of "fatwa fatigue" towards the middle/end of the book - tho one can hardly blame him for allowing a death threat to be the focus of his attention....

Somewhere in the course of this collection of his non-fiction works, Rushdie says, "[we].. are like a child picking shells on the beach never noticing the huge ocean of magnificient beauty right in front of it..". I sit mesmerized, looking around myself in awe, wondering where to start and where to end. When there is so much to know, so much that intrigues and so much that enraptures, there is sometimes a real danger of absorbing nothing or worse, wasting one's time in indecision. This book is like the world around us, profoundly euridite, exhaustingly diverse and sometimes almost ecstatically egoistical. As if revelling in its abiity to take us on this whirlwind tour through Rushdie's thoughts. The celebrated writer in his unique style captures the essense of the demons striking at the roots of humanity in today's times. The one overriding theme of this book is his perennial almost feverish exhortions to push the frontiers of our humanity, to express ourselves in all of our vain, silly, good, bad, notorious and imaginitive glory, to "step across the line". To actually not lose in our victory by giving in to fear of the hands muffling our mouths determined not to let the voices be heard. Rushdie is simply a magnificient writer and I write this in all my twenty six year old idealistic ignorance. Step Across The Line is, mildly put, an eclectic collection of essays, notes and features on topics as diverse as Wizard of Oz to English Soccer to the 9-11. If intelligence has sex appeal, then Rushdie is the quintessential Mata Hari or even better, a reader's Marlyn Monroe forever ready to beguile us with the flowing skirts of his imagination revealed by the gust of wind which is his writing.

The essay about 'The Wizard of Oz' in this book makes me so happy. Overall it's a good sampling of Rushdie's nonfiction work, which gives some insight to the man behind the more fantasy driven fiction he produces.

I finally returned to this book and decided to stop approaching it by doggedly slogging through the first 4/5ths of it in order to "earn" reading what I bought it for: what Rushie had to say after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the US. Boy am I glad I did. Here is a link to what he wrote in just the month following the attacks:

http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0...

One month later and he's already sorting through the heart of the matter, unflinchingly beginning even then to turn over stones... what's under here? Salman Rushdie, although at times you painfully reserved (must be that British education) in the end your Indian upbringing bursts through and you touch the red hot burning core of humanity. What an incandescent combination of form and freedom.

Everything that follows his October 2001 column just continues to delve deeper and deeper into the intricacies of living in the Post-9/11 world. Which made going back and reading the earlier portions of the book that much richer to me. For some reason the context of now, makes then open up. There really is no rhyme or reason to my brain sometimes.

In the following days I want to post excerpts from the essays and my ruminations on them. For now, it being the wee hours, I will say: read it. His even and relentless gaze into the core of our current affairs is a beacon of sanity in our troubled time.

If you offered me a chance to sit down to dinner with any living author, I think Salman Rushdie would be at the top of my list.

Decent essays - some of which have aged better than others.