Chapter 26 - Salman Rushdie’s Audiences, Reception, and the Literary Market

Summary

Salman Rushdie is perhaps one of the most recognizable global literary writers. This emerged in the early 1980s when his work was seen as the quintessential exponent of the Indian novel in English. Distinctive marketing campaigns by publishers, as well as speculation about his advances and publishing deals, have further fuelled the success of the Rushdie brand. This chapter considers issues of reception that relate to Rushdie’s position in the literary marketplace and combines a review of some of the available sales figures with readers’ comments about Rushdie’s novels on online book reviewing sites. It addresses Rushdie’s position in the context of the consolidation of the Anglo-American publishing world through a series of mergers in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s and the significant impact this has had on the way in which literary works are disseminated. It considers what readers’ reviews of his novels and the existence of a critical apparatus, including annotations and study guides, reveal about the classification of Rushdie’s fiction and the constitution of his audience, and it reviews concepts of reading, not reading, and partial reading with a view to the Rushdie affair.