The New Society | culture from the New Statesman

Born into a Muslim family in Bombay, India, in 1947, two months before the country’s partition, educated in the UK and now resident in New York, Salman Rushdie is a writer of multiple, interconnected worlds. At the heart of his work – ever since he won the 1982 Booker Prize with Midnight’s Children – has been some kind of history: the world’s, his own, or both at once. The latest chapter in the history of Rushdie’s life sees the now 78-year-old writer – and survivor of a near-fatal assassination attempt – turn his mind to ageing and dying. That is the unifying thread running through the narratives in his 26th book, the short story collection The Eleventh Hour. He sat down with the New Statesman's culture editor, Tanjil Rashid, late last year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The youngest winner of the Booker Prize fell silent for nearly 20 years. Now she's back with a new novel.--With only her second novel The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai won the 2006 Booker Prize, the leading literary prize in the global Anglosphere, becoming - at the time - the youngest person ever to do so. She was thirty-five. Then: silence. 19 years of it, before another novel emerged - this year. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny.Desai joins Tanjil Rashid on The New Society to discuss her latest novel, and why it was 19 years in the making. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The experimental novelist on finding God, being "a misfit" and her return to writing.--Nicola Barker is "has broken the mould so many times it's almost beyond repair".She's a post-punk literary anarchist who writes from the peripheries of the UK.Her experiments with narrative form have won her many plaudits, including the Goldsmith's Prize for literary fiction, which the New Statesman partners with.Barker joins Tanjil Rashid on the New Statesman culture podcast to discuss her latest novel, Tony Interrupter: a comedy about art, virality, chaos, and the surprising impact of freak events in Kent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cinephiles are revisiting Whit Stillman's 90's movies. Tanjil Rashid meets Stillman to find out why.--Whit Stillman is something of a cult film director. He rose to prominence in 1990 with his debut film Metropolitan, which became the first in the so-called “Doomed. Bourgeois. In love” trilogy: Barcelona came out in 1994 and The Last Days of Disco in 1998. Set among America’s so-called “Preppy” class, the films are comedies of manners in the tradition of Jane Austen, exploring the transitional phase of youth and a certain American identity.The films are now having something of a revival. Stillman joins the New Statesman's culture editor Tanjil Rashid. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.