Salman Rushdie: La città della vittoria

Da domani 7 febbraio 2023 è in distribuzione nelle librerie italiane La città della vittoria, il nuovo romanzo di Salman Rushdie pubblicato da Mondadori.

Salman Rushdie in Italia

Lo scorso 12 luglio Salman Rushdie era in Umbria, al Castello di Civitella Ranieri, ospite di un evento pubblico nel corso del quale ha letto il primo capitolo di Victory City, il suo nuovo romanzo in distribuzione nel 2023. Nei giorni precedenti lo scrittore era stato avvistato a Capri.

Vedi anche Salman Rushdie: La città della vittoria, 6 febbraio 2023

Salman Rushdie on Midnight's Children at 40

Il 3 aprile 2021 The Guardian ha pubblicato un testo di Salman Rushdie nel quale il celebre scrittore commenta i primi 40 anni del suo romanzo I figli della mezzanotte. Salman Rushdie on Midnight's Children at 40: 'India is no longer the country of this novel':

'For a writer in his mid-70s, the continued health of a book published in his mid-30s is, quite simply, a delight. This is why we do what we do: to make works of art that, if we are very lucky, will endure. As a reader, I have always been attracted to capacious, largehearted fictions, books that try to gather up large armfuls of the world. When I started to think about the work that would grow into Midnight’s Children, I looked again at the great Russian novels of the 19th century. (...) And at the great English novels of the 18th and 19th centuries. And at their great French precursor, Gargantua and Pantagruel, which is completely fabulist. I also had in mind the modern counterparts of these masterpieces, The Tin Drum and One Hundred Years of Solitude, The Adventures of Augie March and Catch-22, and the rich, expansive worlds of Iris Murdoch and Doris Lessing. (...) But I was also thinking about another kind of capaciousness, the immense epics of India, the Mahabharata and Ramayana, and the fabulist traditions of the Panchatantra, the Thousand and One Nights and the Kashmiri Sanskrit compendium called Katha-sarit-sagar (Ocean of the Streams of Story). I was thinking of India’s oral narrative traditions, too, which were a form of storytelling in which digression was almost the basic principle; the storyteller could tell, in a sort of whirling cycle, a fictional tale, a mythological tale, a political story and an autobiographical story; he - because it was always a he - could intersperse his multiple narratives with songs and keep large audiences entranced. I loved that multiplicity could be so captivating. (...)

The novel I was planning was a multigenerational family novel, so inevitably I thought of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks and, for all its non-realist elements, I knew that my book needed to be a novel deeply rooted in history, so I read, with great admiration, Elsa Morante’s History: A Novel. And, because it was to be a novel of Bombay, it had to be rooted in the movies as well, movies of the kind now called “Bollywood”, in which calamities such as babies exchanged at birth and given to the wrong mothers were everyday occurrences. As you can see, I wanted to write a novel of vaulting ambition, a high-wire act with no safety net, an all-or-nothing effort: Bollywood or bust, as one might say. A novel in which memory and politics, love and hate would mingle on almost every page. I was an inexperienced, unsuccessful, unknown writer. To write such a book I had to learn how to do so; to learn by writing it. Five years passed before I was ready to show it to anybody. For all its surrealist elements Midnight’s Children is a history novel, looking for an answer to the great question history asks us: what is the relationship between society and the individual, between the macrocosm and the microcosm? To put it another way: do we make history, or does it make (or unmake) us? Are we the masters or victims of our times?

My protagonist, Saleem Sinai, makes an unusual assertion in reply: he believes that everything that happens, happens because of him. That history is his fault. This belief is absurd, of course, and so his insistence on it feels comic at first. Later, as he grows up, and as the gulf between his belief and the reality of his life grows ever wider - as he becomes increasingly victim-like, not a person who acts but one who is acted upon, who does not do but is done to - it begins to be sad, perhaps even tragic. Forty years after he first arrived on the scene - 45 years after he first made his assertion on my typewriter - I feel the urge to defend his apparently insane boast. Perhaps we are all, to use Saleem’s phrase, “handcuffed to history”. And if so, then yes, history is our fault. History is the fluid, mutable, metamorphic consequence of our choices, and so the responsibility for it, even the moral responsibility, is ours. After all: if it’s not ours, then whose is it? There’s nobody else here. It’s just us. If Saleem Sinai made an error, it was that he took on too much responsibility for events. I want to say to him now: we all share that burden. You don’t have to carry all of it.

The question of language was central to the making of Midnight’s Children. (...) Writing in classical English felt wrong, like a misrepresentation of the rich linguistic environment of the book’s setting. (...) In the end I used fewer non-English words than I originally intended. Sentence structure, the flow and rhythm of the language, ended up being more useful, I thought, in my quest to write in an English that wasn’t owned by the English. The flexibility of the English language has allowed it to become naturalised in many different countries, and Indian English is its own thing by now. (...) I set out to write an Indian English novel. (...) India is not cool. India is hot. It’s hot and noisy and odorous and crowded and excessive. How could I represent that on the page? I asked myself. What would a hot, noisy, odorous, crowded, excessive English sound like? How would it read? The novel I wrote was my best effort to answer that question.

The question of crowdedness needed a formal answer as well as a linguistic one. Multitude is the most obvious fact about the subcontinent. Everywhere you go, there’s a throng of humanity. How could a novel embrace the idea of such multitude? My answer was to tell a crowd of stories, deliberately to overcrowd the narrative, so that “my” story, the main thrust of the novel, would need to push its way, so to speak, through a crowd of other stories. There are small, secondary characters and peripheral incidents in the book that could be expanded into longer narratives of their own. This kind of deliberate “wasting” of material was intentional. (...)

When I started writing, the family at the heart of the novel was much more like my family than it is now. However, the characters felt oddly lifeless and inert. So I started making them unlike the people on whom they were modelled, and at once they began to come to life. For example, I did have an aunt who married a Pakistani general, who, in real life, was one of the founders, and the first chief, of the much feared ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency. But as far as I know he was not involved in planning or executing a military coup, with or without the help of pepper pots. So that story was fiction. At least I think it was. Saleem Sinai went to my school. He also lived, in Bombay, in my childhood home, in my old neighbourhood, and is just eight weeks younger than me. His childhood friends are composites of children I knew when I was young. (...) But in spite of these echoes, Saleem and I are unalike. For one thing, our lives took very different directions. Mine led me abroad to England and eventually to America. But Saleem never leaves the subcontinent. His life is contained within, and defined by, the borders of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. (...)

Forty years is a long time. I have to say that India is no longer the country of this novel. When I wrote Midnight’s Children I had in mind an arc of history moving from the hope - the bloodied hope, but still the hope - of independence to the betrayal of that hope in the so-called Emergency, followed by the birth of a new hope. India today, to someone of my mind, has entered an even darker phase than the Emergency years. The horrifying escalation of assaults on women, the increasingly authoritarian character of the state, the unjustifiable arrests of people who dare to stand against that authoritarianism, the religious fanaticism, the rewriting of history to fit the narrative of those who want to transform India into a Hindu-nationalist, majoritarian state, and the popularity of the regime in spite of it all, or, worse, perhaps because of it all - these things encourage a kind of despair. When I wrote this book I could associate big-nosed Saleem with the elephant-trunked god Ganesh, the patron deity of literature, among other things, and that felt perfectly easy and natural even though Saleem was not a Hindu. All of India belonged to all of us, or so I deeply believed. And still believe, even though the rise of a brutal sectarianism believes otherwise. But I find hope in the determination of India’s women and college students to resist that sectarianism, to reclaim the old, secular India and dismiss the darkness. I wish them well. But right now, in India, it’s midnight again'.

Salman Rushdie: Quichotte

Quichotte, l'ultimo romanzo di Salman Rushdie, sarà distribuito nelle librerie italiane a partire dal 12 maggio 2020. Pubblica Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.

Salman Rushdie e Amitav Ghosh in Italia

Lo scorso giugno Salman Rushdie e Amitav Ghosh erano in Italia - rispettivamente a Napoli e a Capri - ospiti dell'evento Le Conversazioni. 

- Video Museo Madre: Salman Rushdie

- Video e articolo Salman Rushdie in Italia: “La libertà d’espressione è in pericolo in tutto il mondo”, Fanpage, 26 giugno 2019: 

'Lo scorso 21 giugno, l'autore indiano naturalizzato britannico è stato ospite de "Le Conversazioni 2019", il festival della letteratura internazionale che da anni fa tappa a Roma, New York e Capri e che da quest'anno ha scelto il Museo Madre di Napoli, dove inaugurare il suo rapporto con la città partenopea. (...) Rushdie ha parlato ai nostri microfoni di diversi temi, dagli Usa di Trump ("Un tempo scrivevo del razzismo e della povertà in India, ora questo vale anche per le nazioni ricche") alla Brexit, dalla libertà di stampa fino al suo amore per i libri di Roberto Saviano ed Elena Ferrante. E, naturalmente, essendo "un'anima migrante", al tema delle migrazioni contemporanee: "Sono stato migrante sin dall'età di 14 anni. Lo sono stato in Inghilterra e lo sono tuttora negli USA. I migranti sono sempre un dono per le società che li accolgono." E l'Italia? Che posto occupa nel cuore di Mr. Rushdie? "Leggo ossessivamente i libri della tetralogia de L'amica geniale," ha dichiarato Rushdie ai nostri microfoni "trovo che sia una delle più grandi scrittrici dei nostri tempi".  Parlando di Elena Ferrante, bisogna quindi parlare di Napoli, la città che lo ospita per "Le Conversazioni". Città con cui Rushdie ha un rapporto che arriva da più lontano. "Sono stato qui dieci anni fa e la trovo meravigliosa". Alla città partenopea, dove si è raccontato intervistato da Antonio Monda davanti a un folto pubblico, assiepato sulla bellissima terrazza del Museo Madre, lo scrittore indiano ha dedicato i suoi pensieri quando ha "aperto" il videomessaggio che gli ha inviato Roberto Saviano e che ha strappato un po' di commozione al settantaduenne scrittore di Bombay: "Sono felice di saperti nella mia città, sarebbe bello vederti raccontare Napoli con la tua lingua straordinaria e la tua fantasia pirotecnica". (...) Di quei "Versi satanici" riparla ancora oggi Rushdie, dicendosi sicuro che ancora oggi un libro come quello "troverebbe editori coraggiosi pronti a pubblicarlo". Tema a cui si lega quello della libertà di stampa "messa in pericolo ovunque nel mondo, anche negli USA" e dei pericoli "che gli inglesi non hanno ancora compreso fino in fondo della Brexit".

Capri

Salman Rushdie: Due anni, otto mesi e ventotto notti

A partire da oggi, è in distribuzione nelle librerie italiane Due anni, otto mesi e ventotto giorni, il nuovo romanzo di Salman Rushdie, pubblicato da Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.

Salman Rushdie on bringing Midnight's Children to the big screen

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Salman Rushdie a Lily Rothman, pubblicata ieri da Time. Salman Rushdie on bringing Midnight’s Children to the big screen:

'Why now, a movie version of Midnight’s Children?

I had actually more or less given up on the idea that there would ever be a film of Midnight’s Children. After all, it’s rather an old book. [Director] Deepa Mehta and I had dinner together in Toronto at the time of the publication of The Enchantress of Florence. We were talking about this and that, and possible collaborations, and discussing other novels of mine that she was interested in. And then suddenly, out of the blue, she asked about Midnight’s Children and did I have the rights. I said I did, and she said, “Can I do that instead?”

You make it sound very easy.

It took 30 years for it to be easy.

Was the plan always for you to write the screenplay?

No. In fact, initially, I said I didn’t want to. I, more or less straightforwardly, refused to do it. I thought I’d written this already. One of the things I’ve learned in the last four or five years is that if Deepa wants something badly enough, in the end she gets it.

She was determined...

She went on and on at me about it. In the end, I agreed to do it for a number of reasons. One, it was the first of my books to be filmed. Given that I loved movies, and here’s a movie being made of my book, probably it’s a good idea to dive in. I thought I might enjoy that, I might learn something from it, that it might be fun. Also, because the novel was written so long ago, I was able to be distant from it in the way that I would need to be. (...)

Were there any scenes you particularly enjoyed writing?

There’s a scene that doesn’t exist in the novel. In the novel, Shiva, Saleem’s alter-ego - who was swapped with him as a baby - never finds out about the baby-swap. In the movie, I thought, if you’re going to do something as Bollywood melodramatic as swapping babies at birth, at some point, the swapped babies have to confront each other. If I’d been sharp enough 30 years ago, I would have included that scene in the novel. (...)

Were you very involved in creative decisions during filming?

The thing I didn’t do is, I didn’t go on the shoot. I thought, I know enough about movies to know only one person directs. I also know that if you’re on a movie set without a very specific job to do, you’re the most annoying person there. And it’s also really boring. But before, and after the shoot, I was quite involved. One of the things I think is quite wonderful in the film is the production design by Dilip Mehta, Deepa’s brother. I showed him a lot of old photographs of my family so that he could get the look of that time right. I made the mistake of telling Deepa that when we were children in my grandparents’ house, one of the things that really scared us was that my grandmother had a very terrifying flock of geese. When I saw the rushes, I realized to my horror that there were the damn geese in the movie!

What was it like the first time you saw a complete version?

The first rough cut was well over four hours long. I felt that it was there, but at that point, you’re in work mode and all you see is what’s wrong. It’s the same when I’m writing a book; if I write a draft of something, when I look at that draft, I’m looking for what’s wrong and how I can fix it. Then there was a moment - Deepa keeps reminding me that I burst into tears at this point, which maybe I did and maybe I didn’t - where we saw a cut, and I felt that everything that had finally come together.

What’s it like seeing the movie with an audience?

That’s been what’s been most interesting to me. Deepa and I have now seen the film, like, 400 times each, and we don’t really need to see it again. But what I do when I sit in screenings is, I watch the audience. We showed it at [the Telluride Film Festival, where it premiered last August], and when the lights came up, there was a gentleman sitting next to me who had tears on his face. I said to him that I was sorry I made him cry - which was a lie, by the way. I was not sorry I made him cry. I was rather pleased I’d made him cry. And he said this sweet thing, he said, “No, don’t be sorry, because these are tears of beauty.” I thought, Can I take that and put it on the poster, please?

And when you’re writing a book you don’t get to see people crying or laughing.

It’s quite true. People are always telling me that they’ve seen people reading my books on the subway, or the beach, or whenever. Other people tell me they see it all the time, but somehow the world is so orchestrated that I never get to see it. So this time, of course, it’s been very delightful to actually be able to watch from the back of the hall'.

Salman Rushdie talks 'Midnight's children', other projects

Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Salman Rushdie a Katie Van Syckle, pubblicata oggi da Rolling Stone. Salman Rushdie talks ‘Midnight’s Children’, other projects:

'Did you feel comfortable writing a screenplay?

I’ve written screenplays before, they just haven’t been made. There was an idea to make a movie of my novel The Ground Beneath her Feet, but it didn’t come to anything. I actually spent my younger days writing advertising commercials, and I’ve written a lot of very short scripts, too. My way of writing a screenplay is you close your eyes and watch the movie in your head, then you open your eyes and write it down.

Have you wanted to adapt Midnight’s Children for a while?

No. In fact, I hadn’t been thinking about it at all. It was a happy series of accidents that brought it into being. But if I were to do it again, I’d prefer to write original material for the screen, instead of adapting.

You also helped adapt the book for a Royal Shakespeare Company production. How was that project different from this one?

The stage version wasn’t that much help in the end. The way the novel is written, Saleem, the hero, narrates the story retrospectively to a woman who works in the pickle factory where he’s ended up. On the stage, you can do that. But on screen, I thought it would seem intrusive to constantly cut back to a couple of people talking. It would break the audience’s emotional connection to the story. So I had to completely rethink it for the screen.

What movies were you thinking about when you wrote this treatment?

The great [Luchino] Visconti film, The Leopard. It also has this quality of epic action and revolution, combined with a very intimate family story at its heart. We thought we needed to find that tone of voice, one that allowed us to move from intimacy to epic. Another was a great film by the Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi called Ugetsu, which means “ghost.” That gave us some clues on how to handle the magical realism part of the story. The thing that is interesting about Ugetsu is that the ghost isn’t treated in a ghostly way. The ghost is treated as a character. We thought there was a clue there. If we had these magic children, when they appeared, they would have to behave - and be shot - to look like a real group of children. 

You’re no stranger to appearing in movies, too. My favorite is your cameo in Bridget Jones’ Diary.

You know, acting was always my unscratched itch, when I was in college and even afterwards. It was the only other thing I seriously thought about doing with my life. I probably made the right decision by not going that way, but every so often, that itch does recur, and if I have a chance to scratch it, I will.

How much were you influenced by Indian cinema?

We both, Deepa [Mehta] more than I, are steeped in Indian cinema, and it did help us with the casting. Siddharth, who plays Saleem’s alter ego, Shiva, and the actor Shriya Saran, who plays Parvati the Witch, are big stars in South Indian cinema. The boy who plays the younger Saleem, Darsheel Safary, was somebody that I saw in the Aamir Khan movie Like Stars on Earth a couple years ago. There’s a scene in the film where Saleem follows his mother to this café, and while he’s watching her, on his right, there’s a giant poster of the movie Mother India, which is a deliberate reference to that iconic film, a kind of Indian Gone With the Wind. In some ways, our film is about Mother India, too. 

Did you visit the set and watch dailies?

No. At that time, Deepa and I developed a relationship of real trust. I just said to her, go make the film, and I’ll see you in the cutting room.

Which scenes were the most difficult to write?

The last third of the film gets dark - there are some violent interrogation and torture scenes. Those were very tough to write. Oddly, the solution I found was to write the dialogue of the torturers almost like black comedy. There’s a little touch of Quentin Tarantino in there, a little bit of Reservoir Dogs. 

Your next project is The Next People, a Showtime science fiction series. Where are you with that?

I did three drafts of a script, and they declared themselves to be very happy. But at this point, there is no green light, so we just wait.

Are you interested in a career move towards television?

The sixty-minute drama form has become very rich. There is so much good work going on in that area, almost novelistic work. I’ve been tempted, but we’ll see.

Which shows are your favorites?

I have to say, that after some initial resistance, I’m now a complete Game of Thrones addict. 

Who is your favorite character?

I’m very proud of the fact that we got Charles Dance into Midnight’s Children to play William Methwold. We actually have the head of the Lannister dynasty in our movie!'

I figli della mezzanotte in Italia

I figli della mezzanotte di Deepa Mehta verrà finalmente distribuito anche nelle sale del nostro Paese il 28 marzo 2013. Vi propongo la locandina e il trailer. In un'intervista pubblicata dal Corriere della Sera il 15 marzo 2013, la regista dichiara: 'Il cinema italiano ha avuto un grande impatto sul mio lavoro di regista. E per I figli della mezzanotte ho pensato spesso a Il Gattopardo, a quel raccontare il dramma e la nostalgia sullo sfondo di una costante tensione politica. Così come ho amato i tocchi surrealisti de Il Conformista con cui Bertolucci ha inaugurato un nuovo modo di girare, capace di mescolare le passioni e i conflitti di un individuo con quelli della nazione'.

Vedi anche:

- Midnight's Children in Italia

- Midnight's Children: recensioni

Libri Come 2013

L'edizione 2013 di Libri Come - Festa del Libro e della Lettura si svolge a Roma dal 14 al 17 marzo all'Auditorium Parco della Musica. Salman Rushdie interverrà alla manifestazione domenica 17 marzo alle ore 21.00 presso la Sala Petrassi.

Midnight's Children: recensioni

Mumbai, 31 gennaio 2013

Superato l'iniziale rifiuto, Midnight's Children ha trovato in India un distributore (PVR Pictures) disposto a proiettarlo nelle sale. Il 31 gennaio 2013, data della prima, alla presenza di Deepa Mehta, di Salman Rushdie e del cast, la pellicola è stata finalmente presentata anche al pubblico indiano non festivaliero. Vi segnalo una nuova locandina e alcune recensioni:

- Srijana Mitra Das, The Times of India, 1 febbraio 2013, ** 1/2: 'The film takes a difficult novel and mostly does well. (...) Salman Rushdie's voice guides you as narrator, blending with Nitin Sawhney's musical score.  It's nicely apt for MC to offer so much in its hearing, Rushdie voicing large ironies with tender little loves, Sawhney's score moving you with its exquisite delights. MC also features some striking performances. Roy as Ahmed Sinai presents a passionate portrayal while Bose as General Zulfikar is tightly controlled, whipping at a flock of geese, luxuriating in bubble baths between executing Pakistan's first military coup. (...) There's occasional staginess and cliches too - turbans, snakes, magicians who don't give it a break - and sometimes, the family drama floods broader political time. The film's length (...) could've been tighter. But mostly, MC moves you with its heart and words, especially when Rushdie murmurs, "Without passport or permit, in a basket of invisibility, I returned - to my India." You feel the love'.
- Rashid Irani, Hindustan Times, 11 febbraio 2013, ** 1/2: 'The film is disjointed and uninvolving. Rushdie's first feature screenplay leaves much to be desired, right from his own inexpressive voice-over. None of the characters are infused with passion. Neither are the socio-political upheavals of post-independence India effectively explored. (...) Frequently, the glossy camera work and production design becomes a distraction. The film will get audiences debating literary adaptations. Even if one doesn't compare it to the book, MC is much too tedious for comfort'.

Vedi anche:

- The Who's Who in Deepa Mehta's Midnight Children, Rediff, 27 luglio 2012

- The pulsing world of Nitin Sawhney

- Toronto International Film Festival 2012

- Midnight's Children in Italia

- I figli della mezzanotte in Italia, 17 marzo 2013

- Salman Rushdie talks ‘Midnight’s Children’, other projects, 15 aprile 2013

- Salman Rushdie on bringing Midnight's Children to the big screen, 25 aprile 2013

Salman Rushdie in Italia

Salman Rushdie e Roberto Saviano - Che tempo che fa, 2012

Salman Rushdie ha incontrato Roberto Saviano nel corso del programma Che tempo che fa andato in onda il 19 novembre 2012. Video Rai. Vi ricordo che Rushdie è stato anche ospite dell'evento BookCity: il 18 novembre lo scrittore ha partecipato ad un incontro pubblico al Teatro Franco Parenti di Milano e ha presentato Joseph Anton, il suo ultimo libro. Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Salman Rushdie a Matteo Sacchi, pubblicata da Il Giornale il 19 novembre 2012. Rushdie: "Ecco cosa vuol dire subire una fatwa":

Signor Rushdie per anni non ha avuto molta voglia di parlare della fatwa, ora come mai l'ha fatto?

«Per anni mi ha dato fastidio che qualsiasi cosa io scrivessi o facessi, le persone continuassero a riportarmi indietro, a voler discutere solo dei Versi satanici... E poi quello seguito alla condanna da parte del governo iraniano era stato un periodo molto difficile, non ero riuscito a metabolizzarlo, a guardarlo con distacco. Ora ad anni di distanza era il momento giusto. E così ho scritto tutto e almeno i giornalisti non avranno più domande da farmi».

La condanna a morte contro uno scrittore da parte di uno Stato fu qualcosa di inaspettato. Come descriverebbe la reazione dell'Occidente?

«Il governo inglese ovviamente si attivò per proteggermi. Ma non manifestò una vera volontà di risolvere il problema. Non fecero grosse pressioni verso il governo iraniano. Si limitarono a sperare che la situazione venisse dimenticata, non volevano guai. Come molti altri governi occidentali. Si è dovuto aspettare il primo governo laburista di Tony Blair perché ci fosse una presa di posizione forte. Se la stessa energia fosse stata dimostrata prima chissà, forse le cose si sarebbero risolte molto più velocemente».

E gli intellettuali occidentali come hanno reagito?

«Alcuni intellettuali hanno fatto molto, e in fretta. Se non fosse stato per loro poteva finire molto male. Gli scrittori inglesi si sono stretti attorno a me. Da questo punto di vista la questione dei Versi Satanici ha contribuito a trasformarci in una vera comunità. Ian McEwan una volta mi ha detto: Lottare per te è stato importante per tutti noi. E anche la solidarietà internazionale è stata tanta. In Italia si mobilitarono anche Umberto Eco e Roberto Calasso. Eco mi commosse, io avevo appena stroncato malamente il suo libro Il Pendolo di Foucault, ma mi difese lo stesso. Poi ci siamo incontrati in Francia e lui è corso ad abbracciarmi urlando: Ciao, sono quella merda di Eco. Siamo diventati amici».

A più di vent'anni di distanza le sembra che la condizione degli scrittori sia migliorata? Che sia più facile scrivere in modo libero?

«La situazione è stata complicata dal terrorismo. E io vedo una certa paura nei giovani scrittori, c'è un alto livello di autocensura. Però negli ultimi mesi mi è capitato di incontrare un certo numero di giovani scrittori islamici che vogliono rompere gli schemi, reinterpretare la cultura islamica e questo mi sembra positivo».

Nel libro hanno un ruolo chiave la figura di suo padre, Anis Rushdie, che era un musulmano poco osservante e la sua famiglia, in cui si respirava un Islam tollerante...

«Mio padre studiava la religione soprattutto dal punto di vista storico, più che un credente era uno studioso vero e proprio, da lui mi è derivato l'interesse per il Corano. Altri membri della mia famiglia erano decisamente più devoti, ma in casa si è sempre potuto parlare di tutti i temi relativi alla religione senza preconcetti o veti. E quello della mia famiglia non era un caso isolato, è esistito un Islam per niente fanatico e aperto che purtroppo negli ultimi cinquant'anni è diventato sempre più minoritario. Questo è terribile».

Cosa pensa del recente film su Maometto che ha provocato violenti moti di piazza? In quali casi è ammissibile la censura?

«Quasi mai è ammissibile. Perché esista la libertà artistica deve esistere anche la libertà di produrre un certo quantitativo di spazzatura. E non si deve mai cedere alle proteste violente, svendere la libertà. È come cedere al bullismo scolastico, non se ne esce più».

Nel libro, per raccontare la sua vita, lei racconta anche quella delle persone che le sono state attorno. E non lo fa con toni morbidi. Qualcuno si è lamentato?

«Per ora nessuno... ma non si sa mai. Comunque in molti casi ho avvisato gli interessati che sarebbero finiti nel libro, in certi casi ho anche fatto loro leggere le parti che li riguardavano. Beh, tranne alla seconda delle mie ex mogli».

Salman Rushdie - Teatro Franco Parenti, Milano, 2012

Midnight's Children in Italia

La regista Deepa Mehta ci ha gentilmente inviato un tweet nel quale ci informa che Midnight's Children verrà distribuito nelle sale italiane a fine marzo 2013: 'We have a fab distributor in Italy. They plan to release it March end. Love Italy. Spent last summer in Ravello - heaven!'. Grazie a Deepa per la cortesia.

Vedi anche I figli della mezzanotte in Italia, 17 marzo 2013

Toronto International Film Festival 2012

L'edizione 2012 del Toronto International Film Festival si svolgerà dal 6 al 16 settembre 2012. In cartellone English Vinglish e Il fondamentalista riluttante. Da segnalare la prima mondiale de I figli della mezzanotte, il nuovo lavoro di Deepa Mehta tratto dal romanzo omonimo di Salman Rushdie. Rushdie, che ha firmato la sceneggiatura, ha dichiarato: 'We met with a number of Bollywood titans, to whom I had to "narrate" the film in their homes and even in their stretch limousines; but we agreed, in the end, to avoid casting those Bombay ultra-stars who were unfamiliar with working as part of an ensemble cast. Instead, we chose wonderful actors, highly acclaimed wherever Indian films are seen, who left their egos at home and gave us their all'. Lo scrittore si riferisce al ricco cast di cui fanno parte Shabana Azmi, Seema Biswas, Rahul Bose, Shahana Goswami, Rajat Kapoor, Soha Ali Khan, Anupam Kher, Ronit Roy, Darsheel Safary e Siddharth. La colonna sonora è composta da Nitin Sawhney. La pellicola, di produzione internazionale, dovrebbe essere distribuita in ottobre. Via Twitter, Deepa Mehta mi ha gentilmente assicurato che potremo ammirare il film su grande schermo anche in Italia.

Hay Festival of Literature and Arts 2012

La 25esima edizione dell'Hay Festival of Literature and Arts si svolge dal 31 maggio al 10 giugno 2012 nella città dei libri: Hay-on Wye, nel Galles. La manifestazione prevede una rassegna cinematografica che include i seguenti titoli indiani: Rang De Basanti (Soha Ali Khan presente alla proiezione), Khosla Ka Ghosla (Anupam Kher presente alla proiezione), Firaaq (Nandita Das presente alla proiezione). In programma anche un incontro con Deepa Mehta e Salman Rushdie che discuteranno dell'adattamento cinematografico de I figli della mezzanotte.

Salman Rushdie e Deepa Mehta, Hay-on Wye 2012

Salman Rushdie: On censorship

L'11 maggio 2012 The New Yorker ha pubblicato On censorship, l'intervento di Salman Rushdie del 6 maggio al PEN World Voices Festival. Ovviamente l'argomento trattato riguarda il celebre scrittore molto da vicino: 

'No writer ever really wants to talk about censorship. Writers want to talk about creation, and censorship is anti-creation, negative energy, uncreation. (...) Censorship is the thing that stops you doing what you want to do, and what writers want to talk about is what they do. (...)

The creative act requires not only freedom but also this assumption of freedom. If the creative artist worries if he will still be free tomorrow, then he will not be free today. If he is afraid of the consequences of his choice of subject or of his manner of treatment of it, then his choices will not be determined by his talent, but by fear. If we are not confident of our freedom, then we are not free.

And, even worse than that, when censorship intrudes on art, it becomes the subject; the art becomes “censored art,” and that is how the world sees and understands it. (...) At its most effective, the censor’s lie actually succeeds in replacing the artist’s truth. That which is censored is thought to have deserved censorship. (...)

You will even find people who will give you the argument that censorship is good for artists because it challenges their imagination. This is like arguing that if you cut a man’s arms off you can praise him for learning to write with a pen held between his teeth. Censorship is not good for art, and it is even worse for artists themselves. (...) So perhaps we can argue that art is stronger than the censor, and perhaps it often is. Artists, however, are vulnerable. (...)

Even more serious is the growing (...) agreement that censorship can be justified when certain interest groups, or genders, or faiths declare themselves affronted by a piece of work. Great art, or, let’s just say, more modestly, original art is never created in the safe middle ground, but always at the edge. Originality is dangerous. It challenges, questions, overturns assumptions, unsettles moral codes, disrespects sacred cows or other such entities. It can be shocking, or ugly, or, to use the catch-all term so beloved of the tabloid press, controversial. And if we believe in liberty, if we want the air we breathe to remain plentiful and breathable, this is the art whose right to exist we must not only defend, but celebrate. Art is not entertainment. At its very best, it’s a revolution.

This piece is drawn from the Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture given by Rushdie, on May 6th, as part of the PEN World Voices Festival'.

India Today Conclave 2012

L'India Today Conclave 2012 si svolgerà a Delhi dal 16 al 17 marzo. Il tema dell'edizione di quest'anno è The Asian century: securing the global promise. Ospite d'onore alla cena di gala d'apertura sarà Henry Kissinger, accolto dal giornalista e scrittore M.J. Akbar. Fra le conferenze in programma il 16 marzo, vi segnalo How does a heroine become the hero?, con Kareena Kapoor, e soprattutto The liberty verses: I am what I am and that's all that I am, con Salman Rushdie. Il celebre scrittore tornerà dunque in India dopo la chiacchierata mancata partecipazione al Jaipur Literature Festival 2012. Pare che Imran Khan, l'ex capitano della nazionale pachistana di cricket, ora dedito alla politica, ospite d'onore alla cena di gala di chiusura, abbia deciso di disertare l'evento in segno di protesta per la presenza di Rushdie. Hari Kunzru ha commentato nel suo profilo Twitter: 'Imran Khan seems to be through his international secular playboy period, entering his flag-&-faith fundo period. #notcricket @salmanrushdie'. Fra le conferenze in programma il 17 marzo, segnalo Can you be a superstar without being an actor?, con Abhay Deol e Kangana Ranaut. Sito ufficiale dell'evento.

Kareena Kapoor

Kangana Ranaut

Abhay Deol

The pulsing world of Nitin Sawhney

Vi segnalo l'articolo The pulsing world of Nitin Sawhney, di Rahul Verma, pubblicato il 20 febbraio 2012 da Rolling Stone India. Di seguito un corposo estratto:

'Considering all nine of Nitin Sawhney’s albums proudly display his Indian heritage with elements including tablas, qawwali, ragas, Kathak rhythms, Sanskrit poems, and songs in Hindi woven into the DNA of his spellbinding music, it’s odd that he’s never played a live show in India. “I feel comfortable in India and it’s the first time in three years that I’m going, normally I’m there much more frequently,” says the classically-trained pianist, flamenco guitarist and club DJ. This anomaly will be laid to rest this month when the tall, lean (...) Sawhney will take the stage at Blue Frog in Delhi and Mumbai, and the Sulafest in Nasik. “Previously I’ve only DJ-ed in India, which is strange as touring India with my band is something I’ve been thinking about doing for a very long time but it’s never worked out. So I’m really pleased it’s finally happening,” says the 47-year-old as we settle into a sparse, spare room adjacent to his studio, located in a converted 19th century dairy in Brixton, South London. (...) 

The British-born composer, who was part of the Asian Underground scene alongside artists such as Talvin Singh and Asian Dub Foundation, attracted attention with Beyond Skin, his fourth studio album, that was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 1999. Since then Sawhney (...) has written music for video games and has collaborated and written for the likes of Sting, Sir Paul McCartney, Brian Eno, Shakira, The London Symphony Orchestra and Cirque Du Soleil.

The sweet stirring magic of Sawhney’s finessed, swirling arrangements of flamenco, drum & bass, dub, folk and soul, belies the fact Last Days of Meaning addresses a deeper, powerful message. “I try to catch a sense of the zeitgeist, of what’s worrying me but I didn’t want to make an album that was overtly about politics. Hopefully Last Days of Meaning captures the parochialism, narrow-mindedness, and paranoia that’s been fed by political opportunism and media in the last ten years.” (...) Gentle, stark folk dominates the album and sits comfortably alongside billowing sitar and tabla funk, drifting ethereal vocals, and school choirs.

Last Days of Meaning’s combination of balancing politics with elegant music is a tried and tested method for Sawhney and makes him stand out in an increasingly bland, anodyne, music industry. Beyond Skin explores identity and challenges India’s quest to be a nuclear power; Prophesy (2001) questions whether technology makes us happier; Human (2003) celebrates unity in a divided world; Philtre (2005) offers a soothing balm for a troubled planet driven by conflict while London Undersound covers 7/7’s terror attacks, the rise of celebrities and media dumbing down.

One of Sawhney’s key beliefs is celebrating the beauty and power of cultures crossing over, and the message really hits home in his live shows when the complexities of fusing flamenco and qawwali, tablas and drum & bass, and blues and ragas, and the extraordinary vision and subtlety of the music, comes to vivid, spine-tingling life. (...) Sawhney is usually either perched on a stool with flamenco guitar or on keys and is the enigmatic, unassuming centrifugal force around which it all, dizzyingly, revolves.

The grace, emotion and originality in Sawhney’s music makes him an ideal choice for composing the score to director Deepa Mehta’s film adaptation of Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie’s landmark novel that many cite as one of the greatest of all time and which is scheduled for release later this year.

How closely has he worked with Mehta and Rushdie on the score? “It’s been very collaborative. Salman Rushdie’s been in the background, but he co-wrote the screenplay with Deepa, which I think he needed to do to retain his vision of it. Deepa and I have been talking and working through themes, over-arching narratives and characterization. We discussed at length what ragas might be appropriate for certain characters, so the film ties in with Indian history and keeps that authenticity. I’ve come up with a system of melodies based around ragas, with each raga attached to a character. That gives the score a sense of rootedness and complements the characters’ feelings. Salman Rushdie got in touch with me via Twitter and said, ”˜It’s the best score since Ravi Shankar and Pather Panchali’. For him to say that was amazing, the guy’s a genius, I love his work,” says Sawhney, almost disbelievingly.

Both Rushdie and Mehta are pariahs of sorts: Rushdie lived in virtual hiding with a security detail for over 15 years and still keeps a low profile following a fatwa ordering his death as a result of the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1988. Similarly Mehta has been dogged by Hindu extremists, and labeled anti-Hindu, since Fire (1996) which depicted a lesbian relationship in a Hindu family, forcing her film Water (2005) to be shot in Sri Lanka.

Is Sawhney worried by working with controversial figures Rushdie and Mehta? “No, it’s great to work with giants like Salman and Deepa. They are controversial characters, because they’re intelligent and not afraid to say what they think. People are threatened because they have strong ideas but there are things Salman says I agree with and other things he says I don’t agree with and the same applies to Deepa. As creators of amazing, imaginative work, I couldn’t be happier working with them,” says Sawhney.

Rushdie, Mehta, and Sawhney’s collaboration not only reflects the growing influence of the Indian diaspora but in terms of reflecting the book is a match made in heaven. “I’m of Indian heritage but grew up in Britain, Salman Rushdie has a Muslim background and Deepa’s of Indian background but lives in Canada and together we’re working on Midnight’s Children, which is about fragmentation.”

Sawhney’s no stranger to scoring films; in fact releasing albums is a small part of what he’s achieved over the past two decades. In recent years he’s conceived a soundtrack to the silent 1929 Indian film Throw of the Dice, a magnificent, Mahabharat-esque tale of romance and adventure directed by Franz Osten, with the London Symphony Orchestra. He’s taken this on tour to Chicago, Toronto, Florence, Auckland, and Amsterdam, and hopes to bring to India in the future. “I’d love to project the film onto some palace walls,” he says.

Sawhney will be scoring the king of suspense Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger at the British Film Institute, again with the London Symphony Orchestra. Surely Sawhney’s one of the few people on the planet who’s as comfortable and capable with a globally renowned orchestra in the world of classical music, as DJing in clubs and releasing a mix for iconic, revered UK club and bastion of electronic music, Fabric.

Also in the last five years, workaholic Sawhney’s been gradually immersing himself in sound design for video games. Rather than a teenage time-pass, he sees video games as the cutting edge of technology, and culture. “I really enjoy working in gaming it’s an emerging art form. Seeing the physics of motion in virtual reality really interests me. People dismiss gaming as trivia but it’s an expression of consciousness, that’s why gaming interests quantum physicists too, they relate to Hindu philosophy too,” he explains.

It’s observations like these that evidence a keen, enquiring mind and make Sawhney the ultimate dinner party guest. Here’s a man who connects video games with Hindu Vedas and the Big Bang, discusses politics in Burma, race relations in Britain, Fox News’ disinformation and the London Riots (“a symptom of a capitalist society out of control”). He can effortlessly light up a room with stories about his mate Paul McCartney (he appears on LP London Undersound), A.R. Rahman who he took for dosa in London over 15 years ago only for Rahman to be harassed by a waiter insisting on photographs, or how his cousin, actress Lara Dutta is due to give birth around the time of his India gigs. “She said to me either she can come to my gig or I can come to her delivery,” jokes Sawhney'.

Jaipur Literature Festival 2012

Vishal Bhardwaj e Gulzar - Jaipur, 2012

Il Jaipur Literature Festival 2012 si è svolto dal 20 al 24 gennaio. Fra i partecipanti, segnalo Hari Kunzru, Vishal Bhardwaj, Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Oprah Winfrey e lo scrittore pachistano Mohammed Hanif. Anupam Kher ha promosso il suo libro The best thing about you is you. L'autore srilankese Shehan Karunatilaka ha vinto il DSC Prize for South Asian Literature con il romanzo Chinaman. The legend of Pradeep Mathew. La manifestazione è stata avvelenata dal polverone sorto intorno alla mancata partecipazione di Salman Rushdie, a causa di minacce alla sua incolumità fisica. In segno di protesta, Hari Kunzru e altri scrittori hanno letto pubblicamente alcune pagine tratte da I versi satanici di Rushdie, ed hanno in seguito abbandonato l'evento. Una denuncia è stata sporta nei loro confronti. Alcuni degli autori presenti al festival hanno lanciato una campagna che chiede l'immediata cancellazione della messa al bando in India del romanzo di Rushdie. Anche la programmata videoconferenza di ieri di Salman Rushdie è stata annullata.

Oprah Winfrey - Jaipur, 2012