Talks & Entertainment

On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic, powerful billionaire from foreign shores takes up residence in “the Gardens,” a gated community in New York’s Greenwich Village. The neighborhood is a bubble within a bubble, and the residents are intrigued by the eccentric Golden family. One of these said neighbors and our guide is René, an ambitious young filmmaker, who befriends the mysterious family in an artistic opportunity to make them the subject of what he hopes will be his career-making film.

Nero Golden lives with his three adult sons and a Russian beauty who seduces Nero with high aspirations of her own. René is quickly drawn into their inner circle, becoming privy to their tortured secrets, infidelities, and crimes.

Outside “the Gardens,” America is facing radical political change—the rise of the Tea Party, identity politics, and backlash against political correctness. While on the brink of a new presidency, a narcissistic presidential candidate known as only The Joker grows stronger, and the country is turned upside-down.

Reminiscent of The Great Gatsby, The Golden House is a modern epic of love and terrorism, loss and reinvention.

Rushdie is the author of twelve previous novels, including Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize), The Satanic Verses, Haroun and The Sea of Stories, and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights. He has also published four works of nonfiction, including Joseph Anton. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature. In conversation with Aminatta Forna, an award-winning novelist, essay writer, and memoirist and current Lannan Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University. Book signing to follow.