The Golden House (Hardcover)
Staff Reviews
On the day of Barak Obama’s inauguration Rene Unterlinden wept for joy, he would weep again when the next president took office but for the opposite reason. Rene was in his 20’s; he lived with his parents, both professors, in the Gardens, a New York neighborhood surrounding a private park. A young filmmaker hoping to make his mark, Rene is instantly drawn to the Goldens when they move into the biggest house in the neighborhood. And why wouldn’t he be drawn to them? Nero Golden, and his three sons, with their huge fortune and secretive shady past? So he watched them, began to write his screenplay about them. The oldest son, Petya, is a genius but afraid to go out of doors. Apu, the middle son, is a brilliant artist. The youngest son, D, was handsome but confused. Rene is accepted into their circle, giving him a ringside seat at their escapades, crimes, and perhaps eventually their deepest secrets. Nero, with the name of a Roman emperor, is a powerful man, a widow, the fate of his wife never spoken. Such a man needs a consort, a queen. Vasilisa, a Russian emigre who has invented herself as surely as Nero has created his own persona, is just the woman to exploit this one vulnerability in Nero. There to watch it all is Rene. As all of this turmoil is stirring up the residents of the Gardens, New York City comes into disarray. It seems the whole country has gone bonkers, electing the least presidential of Presidents, a clown with no experience, a joker whose exploits would have disqualified, possibly jailed, any other candidate for the top job. Now crowned President, he freely vents his message of hate and his narcissistic self-indulgence. Rushdie is one of the finest writers of our era, a grand master of the pen; able to tell a story with sentences so finely crafted they are sheer joy to read. In The Golden House he tells the perfect story for our age and an entertaining tale of a family unraveling.
— Deon StonehouseDescription
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - 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 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR - PBS - HARPER'S BAZAAR - ESQUIRE - FINANCIAL TIMES - THE TIMES OF INDIA 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 Ren , 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. Praise for The Golden House
" A] modern masterpiece . . . telling a story full of wonder and leaving you marveling at how it ever came out of the author's head."--Associated Press "Wildly satiric and yet piercingly real . . . If F. Scott Fitzgerald, Homer, Euripides, and Shakespeare collaborated on a contemporary fall-of-an-empire epic set in New York City, the result would be The Golden House."--Poets & Writers "A tonic addition to American--no, world --literature . . . a Greek tragedy with Indian roots and New York coordinates."--San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
Salman Rushdie is the author of twelve previous 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.
