New Rushdie Set for June
by Bridget Kinsella -- Publishers Weekly, 1/10/2008 12:14:00 PM
In what Will Murphy, Salman Rushdie’s editor at Random House, called a “bold departure” in setting and subject for the author, the next Rushdie novel The Enchantress of Florence will be published June 3. The book is the third novel published under the 1999 deal Ann Godoff (now at Penguin) made with Andrew Wylie for Random to publish four Rushdie novels and a collection of essays.
Florence is a historical novel based on seven years of research set in Renaissance Florence and the court of the Mughal Empire. Random House says the book mixes political intrigue and high drama, romance and magic and reflects on the dangers of intertwined fantasy and reality.
Rushdie has published with several U.S. houses since his first novel Grimus was published by Overlook in 1979. Ten years later Viking famously published The Satanic Verses, which incited an Islamic fatwa against Rushdie. Random published the author’s last novel Shalimar the Clown in 2005. In March, Random will release repackaged trade paper editions of three Rushdie books the imprint did not originally publish in hardcover: Shame (Knopf, ’83), The Satanic Verses and The Jaguar Smile (Viking, ’87).
