First edition. A collection of 70 pieces by Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands gathers lectures, broadcasts, reviews, interviews, and articles written between 1981 and 1991. Arranged into thematic sections, these deal with subcontinental themes (specifically related to Midnight’s Children, the politics of India and Pakistan, and Indo-Anglian literature, including Kipling); with movies and television – including Rushdie on Richard Attenborough’s Ghandi; and with the experience of Indian migrants to Britain and other political issues. Large sections are dedicated to Rushdie’s writing on other authors, and the book closes with essays on ‘the crisis that engulfed my novel The Satanic Verses’ (p. 6). In his review of the volume in The New York Times (2 June 1991), Robert Towers praised ‘the eloquence and pathos of the three concluding pieces’ in particular.

Published on 28 March 1991, this first edition had a print-run of 15,000 copies.