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The Golden House

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

When powerful real-estate tycoon Nero Golden immigrates to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult children assume new identities, taking 'Roman' names, and move into a grand mansion in downtown Manhattan. Arriving shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, he and his sons, each extraordinary in his own right, quickly establish themselves at the apex of New York society.

The story of the Golden family is told from the point of view of their Manhattanite neighbour and confidant, René, an aspiring filmmaker who finds in the Goldens the perfect subject. René chronicles the undoing of the house of Golden: the high life of money, of art and fashion, a sibling quarrel, an unexpected metamorphosis, the arrival of a beautiful woman, betrayal and murder, and far away, in their abandoned homeland, some decent intelligence work.

In a new world order of alternative truths, Salman Rushdie has written the ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies. A brilliant, heart-breaking realist novel that is not only uncannily prescient but shows one of the world's greatest storytellers working at the height of his powers.

'One of the most vivid and convincing portraits of contemporary America I've read' Observer

© Salman Rushdie 2017 (P) Penguin Audio 2017

Critics Review

It’s one of the most vivid and convincing portraits of contemporary America I’ve read.
Observer, Book of the Year
[A] complex and witty fable … Rushdie has always been an impish myth-manipulator, refusing to accept, as in this novel, that the lives of the emperors can’t be blended with film noir, popular culture and crime caper. On the evidence of The Golden House, he is quite right.
Observer
Unruly but exuberant… Much of the success of The Golden House, in fact, lies in its humour and in the vigour of its storytelling… There is a glowing energy to the prose that makes this Rushdie’s most enjoyable, mischievous and American of novels.
Financial Times
Intelligent and darkly funny...with a raw political edge.
The Times
Rushdie writes with a Dickensian exuberance, always full of humour as well as striking scornful, tragic notes. Often he plays the role of satirist. His caricatures and outsize figures are full of life, wickedness and human energy: again, as in Dickens, grounded in a precise social and political scene.
Evening Standard
Rushdie’s fable is a sprightly portrait of American life from Obama’s election to the rise of Trump.
Mail on Sunday
Where Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities sent up the go-go, me-me Reagan/Bush era, Rushdie’s latest novel captures the existential uncertainties of the anxious Obama years... A sort of Great Gatsby for our time: everyone is implicated, no one is innocent, and no one comes out unscathed.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
A ravishingly well-told, deeply knowledgeable, magnificently insightful, and righteously outraged epic which pos­es timeless questions about the human condition... As Rushdie’s blazing tale surges toward its crescendo, life, as it always has, rises stubbornly from the ashes, as does love.
Booklist
Salman Rushdie is a writer of illimitable imagination and verbal ingenuity. He grips us with wild storylines, takes us on flights of fancy, brings us back down again, enthralled and dazed… The terrorist attacks by Islamicists, the unplanned developments, the bribery and corruption and multiple tragedies are gritty, real and moving. Extreme scenes are written so beautifully I don’t think I will ever forget them… The Golden House is an extraordinary book, a brooding meditation on the personal and political, on ethics, egotism, freedom and interdependence.
i
This is a compelling thriller with a pinch of fantasy, populated by larger-than-life characters… This powerfully cinematic novel, enriched by references to literature, popular culture and film, is dense, detailed and rewarding, displaying one of our leading novelists at the top of his game.
Sunday Express
Author Salman Rushdie
Narrator Vikas Adam
Duration 14 hours and 40 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781473549951
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Generational sagas, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Social issues
Availability AU, GB, IE

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