East, West is a collection of nine stories that reveal the oceanic distances and the unexpected intimacies between East and West.
Praise
“. . .[a] sometimes poignant and intimate, sometimes boisterously inventive, sometimes gently provocative collection of short stories. . . .Mr. Rushdie, one suspects, would rather have his work discussed purely as literature, without reference to the unhappy history that has plagued him, but sometimes the stories themselves make it difficult to ignore the story of their author.” —The New York Times
“Above all is the range and versatility of Rushdie’s use of language, from tightly controlled to dazzlingly free, from mock-Shakespeare to mimic-Indian. More than any other English writer, Rushdie makes the page sing with his prose.” —Washington Post
“One of the decade’s great literary triumphs: magical, compassionate, wise, beautiful, and so very entertaining.”—The Toronto Star
“Richly imaginative…The characters are memorable, the language swift, and the reader is touched by desire, friendship and love.” —The Globe and Mail
“A pleasure to read…The stories in East, West have the careful precision of ivory miniatures. And all of them, beneath their infectiously playful surfaces ponder the imponderables of human fate.” —Macleans’s