Author Salman Rushdie was in town Thursday and Friday during the Copenhagen International Literature Festival, CPH:LITT.09. He gave an hour long talk about his latest book The Enchantress of Florence, and other works and themes.He was interviewed by his Danish translator, Thomas Harder, and it turned out to be an event of witty, verbal fencing. As witty as are the books and writings by Salman Rushdie in general. Some of the serious questions were rebuffed with answers like 'I hadn't really thought about that' or 'The good thing about translators is, that they think harder about your work than you do - so you can steal their ideas.'
Or on the theme of the many illusions in the historic tales of The Enchantress of Florence - he referred to the Medieval times when people couldn't get fresh bread, so they had to eat old, mouldy, stale bread. This mould gave them hallucinations - so this could be the explanation, when people saw illusions and told hallucinatory stories. If that is the paradoxical fact, Sir Salman Rushdie - please keep eating stale bread!