THE BOOKERS' FAVOURITE

Salman Rushdie talks to Andrew Anthony in The Observer, 6 April.
Acclaimed novels, a knighthood and, most tellingingly, the fatwa which forced him into hiding have made him one of the most celebrated, and controversial, authors of our age. His latest book returns to the tortured relationship between East and West; its other obsession is with the power of female beauty. Here he reveals how writing it helped him escape the painful break-up of his marriage to Padma Lakshmi.

Among other things, Salman Rushdie's latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence, is a hymn to the creative and destructive power of female beauty. The heroine is a young woman of such transporting physical allure that on seeing her men fall instantly and insanely in love, heedless to the ensuing dangers. Wherever could he have come by the idea?

'Ridiculously beautiful, comically beautiful' was how he once described Padma Lakshmi, the woman who became his fourth wife. But in fact, Rushdie insists, he had the concept of the novel before he met the Indian-American model, actress and cookbook author. Still, that piece of chronology won't prevent many readers from glimpsing the shade of Lakshmi in the 'slender' and ravishing 'banquet for the senses' that is Qara Koz, a woman 'meant for palaces, and kings'.

The full interview here.........

And Salman Rushdie back to his best , this from the Telegraph on Sunday............