Languages of Truth

Wonder Tales

1

Before there were books, there were stories. At first the stories weren t written down. Sometimes they were even sung. Children were born, and before they could speak, their parents sang them songs, a song about an egg that fell off a wall, perhaps, or about a boy and a girl who went up a hill and fell down it. As the children grew older, they asked for stories almost as often as they asked for food. Now there was a goose that laid golden eggs, or a boy who sold the family cow for a handful of magic beans, or a naughty rabbit trespassing on a dangerous farmer s land. The children fell in love with these stories and wanted to hear them over and over again. Then they grew older and found those stories in books. And other stories that they had never heard before, about a girl who fell down a rabbit hole, or a silly old bear and an easily scared piglet and a gloomy donkey, or a phantom tollbooth, or a place where wild things were. They heard and read stories and they fell in love with them, Mickey in the night kitchen with magic bakers who all looked like Oliver Hardy, and Peter Pan, who thought death would be an awfully big adventure, and Bilbo Baggins under a mountain winning a riddle contest against a strange creature who had lost his precious, and the act of falling in love with stories awakened something in the children that would nourish them all their lives: their imagination.

The children fell in love with stories easily and lived in stories too; they made up play stories every day, they stormed castles and conquered nations and sailed the ocean blue, and at night their dreams were full of dragons. They were all storytellers now, makers of stories as well as receivers of stories. But they went on growing up and slowly the stories fell away from them, the stories were packed away in boxes in the attic, and it became harder for the former children to tell and receive stories, harder for them, sadly, to fall in love. For some

Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the European Union s Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a former president of PEN America. His books have been translated into over forty languages.

Praise for Languages of Truth

Mesmerizing . . . Rushdie s writing is erudite and full of sympathy, brimming with insight and wit: Literature has never lost sight of what our quarrelsome world is trying to force us to forget. Literature rejoices in contradiction. Rushdie s fans will be delighted. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Wide-ranging nonfiction pieces by the distinguished novelist, unified by his commitment to artistic freedom and his adamant opposition to censorship in any form. . . . This collection . . . showcases his generous spirit, dedicated to illuminating the work of fellow artists and defending their right to unfettered creativity. . . . Engagingly passionate, and endlessly informative: a literary treat. Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Praise for Salman Rushdie

He is a legend. . . . His is not only an enviable talent, it s a revelatory mind [displaying] a profound knowledge of history, culture, human frailty, and triumph. Toni Morrison

One of the greatest writers of our age . . . a giant of literature. Neil Gaiman

Rushdie is our Scheherazade. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian

A master of metamorphosis transforming life, art and language in the subterranean maze of his imagination. Don DeLillo

A storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air. The New York Times Book Review