New Salman Rushdie’s book, The Golden House, due out in September, promises to be the “ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies”, dramatising the last eight years of US politics.
According to publisher Jonathan Cape, The Golden House, Rushdie’s 13th novel, follows “a young American filmmaker whose involvement with a secretive, tragedy-haunted family teaches him how to become a man”. Starting with the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2008, the book will include current and recent political and social events, including the rise of the ultra-conservative Tea Party; the Gamergate scandal, which saw the widespread online harassment of female gaming journalists framed as a debate about media ethics; the debate over identity politics; and, perhaps most urgently, “the insurgence of a ruthlessly ambitious, narcissistic, media-savvy villain sporting makeup and coloured hair”.
Publishing director at Jonathan Cape, Michal Shavit called it “the ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies” for “a new world order of alternate truths”. She said The Golden House was “a brilliant, heartbreaking, realist novel that is not only uncannily prescient but shows one of the world’s greatest storytellers working at the height of his powers”.
Rushdie is best known for his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, which was alleged to have traduced the prophet Muhammad, and resulted in him receiving death threats and being forced into exile.
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