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Salman Rushdie is one of the most widely discussed and controversial of contemporary writers, particularly since the publication of The Satanic Verses and the complex issues raised by the ensuing 'Rushdie Affair'. In this important study of the novelist, Damian Grant discusses the novel and its repercussions and sets the episode within the wider context of Rushdie's other work through to The Moor's Last Sigh (1996). He reveals how Rushdie's novels can be seen as texts characteristic of our period, negotiating between different - often conflicting - cultures, discourses, and conceptions of truth. Grant also shows how Rushdie demonstrates dual responsibility to the world of historical circumstances and to the world of the imagination.

A tall, yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself 'Mogor dell'Amore', the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the real Grand Mughal, the Emperor Akbar, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the whole imperial capital. The stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess, the youngest sister of Akbar's grandfather Babar: Qara Koz, 'Lady Black Eyes', a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, who is taken captive first by an Uzbek warlord, then by the Shah of Persia, and finally becomes the lover of a certain Argalia, a Florentine soldier of fortune, commander of the armies of the Ottoman Sultan. When Argalia returns home with his Mughal mistress the city is mesmerized by her presence, and much trouble ensues."The Enchantress of Florence" is the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world. It brings together two cities that barely know each other - the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire and the treachery of sons, and the equally sensual Florentine world of powerful courtesans, humanist philosophy and inhuman torture, where Argalia's boyhood friend 'il Machia' - Niccolr Machiavelli - is learning, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. These two worlds, so far apart, turn out to be uncannily alike, and the enchantments of women hold sway over them both. But is Mogor's story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if he's a liar, must he die?

Flapping Eagle, a young Indian, receives the gift of immortality after drinking a magic fluid. Tiring of the burden of eternal life, he sets out on a monumental search for the mystical Calf Island, where he can rejoin the human race. His journey is peopled with strange characters.

An adventure novel about a son's attempt to rescue his father and return to him a special gift. The father is a professional storyteller. One day his wife leaves him to run off with a little clerk.

Rushdie's visit to Nicaragua in 1986 alerted the writer to a land of difficult, often beautiful contradictions. This portrait of the people, the politics, the land and the poetry highlights the human facts of a country in the midst of a revolution.

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Zogoiby, only son of a wealthy, artistic Bombay family, finds himself at crisis point. After a tragic love affair, he plunges into a life of depravity in Bombay before leaving for involvement in financial scandal in London and, ultimately, violence in Spain.

This is the story of Max, his killer, and his daughter - and of a fourth character, the woman who links them, whose story explains them all. The story of a deep love gone fatally wrong, destroyed by a shallow affair, it is an epic narrative that moves from California to France, England, and above all, Kashmir. At its heart is the tale of that earthly paradise of peach orchards and honey bees, of mountains and lakes, of green-eyed women and murderous men: a ruined paradise, not so much lost as smashed. Lives are uprooted, names keep changing - nothing is permanent, yet everything is connected. Spanning the globe and darting through history, Salman Rushdie's majestic narrative captures the heart of the reader and the spirit of a troubled age.

The subjects of Salman Rushdie's new collection of non-fiction range from The Wizard of Oz, U2, the death of Princess Diana and football to 20th century writers including Angela Carter, Arthur Miller and Arundhati Roy.