Night Waves - Salman Rushdie

Matthew Sweet talks to the novelist Salman Rushdie about Luka and the Fire of Life, a sequel to Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990). While Haroun was written for his first son, Rushdie's new novel is a gift to his second son to mark his twelfth birthday. It's about a 12 year old boy who must battle through a dangerous magical kingdom in order to save his father, who has fallen suddenly into a deep sleep. Since winning the Booker prize in 1981 with Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie has been one of Britain's most famous and controversial writers. His book the Satanic Verses sparked a storm of international protest in 1988 , which resulted in a fatwa being issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini and years of police protection. On the night that this year's winner of the Man Booker is announced, Rushdie discusses his return to children's literature and why he has finally started to write an autobiography.