He’s 72, but you would have guessed early 60s. Rushdie comes in at exactly 11am we shake hands, and he sits down opposite.
My favourites are probably The Ground Beneath Her Feet, a version of the Beatles story on a parallel Earth with an Indian John Lennon, and, actually, this new one: Quichotte, a comic, very contemporary reimagining of Don Quixote. I’ve been on the ride for every book since. Then came Midnight’s Children, the first literary-fiction novel I had read that wasn’t boring as all hell. Rusdhie is smaller than you're expecting, with an impish, intelligent smile, and there's something Tolkienesque about him that you can't quite put your finger on I liked Rushdie when I was a 10-year-old kid and I found an interesting new English science-fiction writer in the library whose first novel, Grimus, was a wee bit JG Ballard, a wee bit Angela Carter and a wee bit something entirely sui generis. I liked Salman Rushdie before he was Salman Rushdie. I’ve interviewed and talked to many writers, but Rushdie is different. I’ve circled the words “mastodons” and “New York Yankees”. I’ve arrived early for the interview and have laid out my voice recorder, a copy of his new novel, Quichotte, and a list of questions. It’s the sleek conference room at Salman Rushdie’s agent’s office. I’m up on the 23rd floor of a building in midtown Manhattan.
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