The Golden House

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Nero Golden is a bombastic real estate tycoon with a mysterious past living in a fortress-like Manhattan mega-mansion. Sound familiar? It turns out there's nothing predictable about Rushdie's epic new novel brimming with references to film, mythology, literature, and, yes, contemporary politics. Rushdie absolutely dazzles in this witty, timely tale of America at its tipping point. Recommended By Moses M., Powells.com

A modern American epic set against the panorama of contemporary politics and culture — a hurtling, page-turning mystery that is equal parts The Great Gatsby and The Bonfire of the Vanities.

On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in the architectural jewel of "the Gardens," a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village. The neighborhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are immediately intrigued by the eccentric newcomer and his family. Along with his improbable name, untraceable accent, and unmistakable whiff of danger, Nero Golden has brought along his three adult sons: agoraphobic, alcoholic Petya, a brilliant recluse with a tortured mind; Apu, the flamboyant artist, sexually and spiritually omnivorous, famous on twenty blocks; and D, at twenty-two the baby of the family, harboring an explosive secret even from himself. There is no mother, no wife; at least not until Vasilisa, a sleek Russian expat, snags the septuagenarian Nero, becoming the queen to his king — a queen in want of an heir.

Our guide to the Goldens' world is their neighbor René, an ambitious young filmmaker. Researching a movie about the Goldens, he ingratiates himself into their household. Seduced by their mystique, he is inevitably implicated in their quarrels, their infidelities, and, indeed, their crimes. Meanwhile, like a bad joke, a certain comic-book villain embarks upon a crass presidential run that turns New York upside-down.

Set against the strange and exuberant backdrop of current American culture and politics, The Golden House also marks Salman Rushdie’s triumphant and exciting return to realism. The result is a modern epic of love and terrorism, loss and reinvention — a powerful, timely story told with the daring and panache that make Salman Rushdie a force of light in our dark new age.

"A ravishingly well-told, deeply knowledgeable, magnificently insightful, and righteously outraged epic which pos­es timeless questions about the human condition. Can a person be both good and evil? Is family destiny? Does the past always catch up to us? In a time of polarizing extremes, can we find common ground? Will despots and their supporters be forever with us? Will humankind ever learn? Can story and art enlighten us? As [Salman] Rushdie’s blazing tale surges toward its crescendo, life, as it always has, rises stubbornly from the ashes, as does love." Booklist (Starred Review)

"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)

"Ambitious and rewarding... Replete with allusions to literature, film, mythology and politics, the novel simultaneously channels the calamities of Greek drama and the information overload of the internet. The result is a distinctively rich epic of the immigrant experience in modern America, where no amount of money or self-abnegation can truly free a family from the sins of the past." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Told in Salman Rushdie's unparalleled prose, this inventive and timely new novel follows a real-estate tycoon and his mysterious, powerful family. In scope and literary ambition, it's The Great Gatsby meets The Bonfire of the Vanities--a contemporary saga with wonderful, moving characters and a gripping story straight out of today's headlines, set against the panorama of American culture and politics since the inauguration of Barack Obama.

Salman Rushdie is the author of twelve novels — Grimus, Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and The Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, Luka and the Fire of Life, and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights — and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of nonfiction — Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, and Step Across This Line — and co-edited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.