RUSHDIE"S NEW TAKE ON NOVEL

As the world has gone on in the last quarter century, it has shrunk. Part of that is communication, part of that is mass migration, part of that is economic globalisation, and yes, part of that is international terrorism. For a combination of all these reasons, our societies in different parts of the world bleed into each other, sometimes literally, to a much greater degree than was ever the case. So my stories have turned into these strange stories where to understand one bit of the world, you have to understand another bit of the world. In a way, it goes against the grain of the novel. The novel has something provincial in nature. The novel wants to be put in a small town with a couple of merchants and an unfaithful wife and tell the story. But the world ain't like that. Now you must put together a story that operates in many cultures and you must put those pieces of jigsaw together.

Yes, you guess it right: it's Salman Rushdie in an interview with the Times Of India dated October 16, 2005.

What does he mean actually? He has been talking like this post-9/11 for quite a while. I can't quite grasp his message. Is it an ostentatious excuse for the kind of novels that he's writing these days?

Is Shalimar the Clown a great novel?

MRINAL BOSE