Word: authored
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...next decade he supported himself in London by writing advertising copy. He wed a British woman and fathered a son. (That union ended in divorce in 1987; Rushdie is now married to the American author Marianne Wiggins.) His first novel, Grimus (1974), was a critical and commercial flop, but his second, Midnight's Children (1981), created an international sensation. The book hinged on an inspired conceit: that 1,001 babies born across the subcontinent on the stroke of Indian independence had acquired magical powers to communicate with one another. Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize, Britain's most coveted...
...manner reminiscent of Loon Lake (1980). And this is not the first time Doctorow has written about a boy's coming of age in the Bronx; he did so in World's Fair (1985), even giving its made-up hero his own first name, Edgar. But the author is not simply repeating himself this time out. He is mixing elements from his other novels in a manner that proves combustible and incandescent...
...part of a diabolical scheme to influence American public opinion? And what if this media mole were to get his claws on the most ^ powerful U.S. communications company? That is the provocative premise of Agent of Influence (Putnam; 416 pages), an intriguing merger mystery by David Aaron, author of the best-selling 1987 spy thriller State Scarlet...
Aaron's tale bristles with arcana picked up during the author's career in Washington, where he served as deputy to Zbigniew Brzezinski on President Carter's National Security Council, and on Wall Street, where he is a board member of the Oppenheimer investment firm. At times, Aaron can get carried away with brand names, as when he notes that a character was able to fall asleep on a plane "despite a monster roar from the four Rolls-Royce SNECMA Olympus 593 jet engines." But he manages to keep his plot shifting as fast as the ticks in the price...
Rushdie, whose first name is also Salman, seems to share the character's skepticism about the authenticity of God's revealed word. But the real-life author will be lucky if he enjoys the same clemency as his fictional counterpart. His literary twisting of the Koran is the central transgression for which the Ayatullah Khomeini has condemned him to death. Explains Indian- born writer Mihir Bose: "Every Muslim, whether fundamentalist or liberal, believes the Koran is literally the very word of God, preserved in heaven and transmitted by the angel Gabriel through Muhammad." The Prophet himself, although not considered divine...