Fiction

Salman Rushdie is celebrated as “a master of perpetual storytelling” (The New Yorker), illuminating truths about our society and culture through his gorgeous, often searing prose. Now, in his latest collection of nonfiction, he brings together insightful and inspiring essays, criticism, and speeches that focus on his relationship with the written word and solidify his place as one of the most original thinkers of our time.

Gathering pieces written between 2003 and 2020, Languages of Truth chronicles Rushdie’s intellectual engagement with a period of momentous cultural shifts. Immersing the reader in a wide variety of subjects, he delves into the nature of storytelling as a human need, and what emerges is, in myriad ways, a love letter to literature itself. Rushdie explores what the work of authors from Shakespeare and Cervantes to Samuel Beckett, Eudora Welty, and Toni Morrison mean to him, whether on the page or in person. He delves deep into the nature of “truth,” revels in the vibrant malleability of language and the creative lines that can join art and life, and looks anew at migration, multiculturalism, and censorship.

Enlivened on every page by Rushdie’s signature wit and dazzling voice, Languages of Truth offers the author’s most piercingly analytical views yet on the evolution of literature and culture even as he takes us on an exhilarating tour of his own exuberant and fearless imagination.

Long after Fina has left Sierra Leone for America, memories of a broken initiation still haunt her. She longs to return, to find her grandmother and right the path that has been set for young girls centuries past. Her journey from the streets of Freetown to Washington echoes with the tensions, ambiguities, and fragmentation of the diaspora.

Fina’s inner turmoil and feelings of ‘otherness’ persist as she travels further from home. Ultimately, the broken path of her childhood brings Fina back to Sierra Leone, to a life she had never imagined for herself.

So the Path Does Not Die is a tender and gently observed novel exploring attitudes towards female circumcision from an exciting voice in African literature.

Change is coming to Sweden’s far north: its untapped natural resources are sparking a gold rush, with the criminal underworld leading the charge. But it’s not the prospect of riches that brings Lisbeth Salander to the small town of Gasskas. She has been named guardian to her niece Svala, whose mother has disappeared. Two things soon become clear: Svala is a remarkably gifted teenager—and she’s being watched.

Mikael Blomkvist is also heading north. He has seen better days. Millennium magazine is in its final print issue, and relations with his daughter are strained. Worse still, there are troubling rumors surrounding the man she’s about to marry. When the truth behind the whispers explodes into violence, Salander emerges as Blomkvist’s last hope.

A pulse-pounding thriller, The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons sees Salander and Blomkvist navigating a world of conspiracy and betrayal, old enemies and new friends, ice-bound wilderness and the global corporations that threaten to tear it apart.

The morning after a humiliating post-breakup social media post (#sponsoredbywine), Kate Rigsby learns she’s lost her marketing job along with her almost-fiancé. Worse, she realizes how little she truly cared about either. Craving a reset, Kate flees the big-city life she spent many years building—and almost as many doubting—to take a temporary gig at Treetops, a swanky, off-the-grid creative retreat in Muskoka, complete with meditation circles, deluxe spa, and artisanal cocktails. At least, that’s what the brochure promises . . .

The reality is a struggling resort that’s stuck in the 1990s, fax machine included. Kate’s office is a bunker, her boss is a nightmare, and at night she shares a freezing hut with her seventy-pound Goldendoodle. Then there’s the sexy, off-limits coworker whose easy smile and lumberjack forearms are distracting Kate from the already near-impossible task of making this snowbound oasis profitable.

On the upside, the surroundings are breathtaking. The Treetops crew is quirky and (mostly) kind. And somehow, Kate’s starting to feel new enthusiasm for her career—and her life. In fact, she’s daring to challenge herself in ways she never dreamed of before.

With wit and heart, Reasonable Adults explores the crossroads we all face—and how a detour born of disaster can take us just where we need to go.

Sephy is a Cross – a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a nought – a ‘colourless’ member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses. The two have been friends since early childhood. But that’s as far as it can go. Until the first steps are taken towards more social equality and a limited number of Noughts are allowed into Cross schools…

Against a background of prejudice and distrust, intensely highlighted by violent terrorist activity by Noughts, a romance builds between Sephy and Callum – a romance that is to lead both of them into terrible danger….