Between the covers: What's really going on in the world of books
Padma Lakshmi portrays husband Salman Rushdie as 'unsympathetic and a little needy' in new memoir
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Padma Lakshmi has lifted the lid on her relationship with Salman Rushdie in a memoir released on Tuesday. In it, Rushdie comes across as unsympathetic and a little needy.
For instance, when Lakshmi, a TV presenter, showed him that she had made the cover of Newsweek, his response was: “The only time Newsweek put me on their cover was when someone was trying to put a bullet in my head.”
Between the Covers met the couple in 2004 at the launch of Lisa Appignanesi’s novel The Memory Man, when they had been married for a month and had just returned from their honeymoon.
While Lakshmi gushed that married life was wonderful and she felt like the luckiest woman in the world. Rushdie, on the other hand, retorted: “The only thing anyone seems to know about me now is that I’m married.”
He had, at least, enjoyed his honeymoon. “We decided to do all the obvious things you just don’t do in Paris: we went to see the Mona Lisa ... I haven’t seen it for 20 years.”
Rushdie also revealed that evening that he was three quarters of the way through a novel, but “I won’t discuss it until it’s finished, because it drains away all the energy”. His next book was Shalimar the Clown, in 2005, a novel with a hero who is betrayed by a beautiful woman.
*************
Graham Swift’s Mothering Sunday has reached number two on Waterstones bestselling hardback fiction chart, almost a month after it was published.
The novel is not really about Mothering Sunday, at least not in a Hallmark Cards way, but presumably people have been buying it for their mothers on account of its title.
Between the Covers has had an idea, and is off to copyright the titles Fathers Day, Valentines Day, and Happy Birthday to the Woman/ Man who Has Everything.
*************
Political publisher Biteback has signed up four new volumes of diaries from Alastair Campbell, starting after his departure from Downing Street.
A week earlier they announced that they had signed David Laws’ “revealing insider account of the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition from its birth in 2010 ...”, saying that Laws was “uniquely placed” to spill the beans.
Just how uniquely placed was he as an insider, given that he resigned from the Coalition the same month as joining it, and was out of government for much of 2010, 11, and 12? “David was still very close to the heart of things”, reveals a Biteback source.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments