A Literary Life

Une Vie Sans Joie (1924) aka Backbiters, and sometimes called Catherine, is the first film on which Jean Renoir – that giant of French cinema – received a directing credit.    He shared directing duties with Albert Dieudonné, an actor and writer as well as director, who had some major roles in the silent era (including in this) before retiring from cinema with the onset of sound (though he would be recalled from retirement in mid 1930s and early 1940s for a couple of roles).   Despite the co-direction credit, Une Vie Sans Joie is stamped with certain Renoir preoccupations and imagery that his hand is easy to detect – some sequences are so painterly in their use of light, that one might even detect the hand of Pierre-Auguste in certain scenes. Looking back on this film, almost ninety years later, is really looking into history: the scenes of provincial life display rustic charm and ingrained poverty – at times it could be a Zola novel bought to life, but this ...

Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie Joseph Anton: A Memoir by Salman Rushdie A Review When The Satanic Verses was published in 1988, it gained immediate attention –not for the reasons now known – but rather for its quality of prose.   It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in that year (losing out to Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda), and won the 1988 Whitbread Award for novel of the year.   Many considered it a far superior novel to Midnight’s Children, which had won the Booker in 1981.   There was some uproar from the Muslim community in 1988, but it wasn’t until a few months into the following year, (14 February 1989, to be precise, and a date Rushdie will never forget) that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, issued his now famous fatwā calling for Rushdie's death. The life that Salman Rushdie lived under the height of the fatwā has long remained secret.   He received state protection – something not all quarters of ...