Professor Malik Solanka is living in self-imposed exile from his wife and his life in England, inhabiting instead an apartment in Manhattan at the beginning of the 21st century, what some see as a golden age. But all around, what the good professor sees is fury—wild forces of consumption and culture tahat seem to whip everyone around him—from cabdrivers to computer programmers. And the professor is not immune himself.

The story of Professor Solanka is the subject of the latest novel by Salman Rushdie, the prize-winning author who is known for surviving his own battles with fury, notably the death sentence imposed on him in 1989 by the Ayatollah Khomeini for alleged blasemphies against Islam in his novel The Satanic Verses.

About the Author
Salman Rushdie is the author of seven novels—Grimus, Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the "Booker of Bookers"), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor's Last Sigh, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet—and one work of short stories, East, West. He has also published four works of non-fiction: The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, The Wizard of Oz, and Mirrorwork.