Rushdie begins the book with a sentence, "Before there were books, there were stories", and reflects on the art of storytelling and on his individual search for a narrative. A journey that took him beyond the realm of realism in order to create magical universes of alternative realities.[2] In the book, Rushdie celebrates the potential of stories as catalysts for nourishing the imagination. He suggests that adults lose some of the awe children have for repeated stories with which they fall in love.[3]
I grow up in India the immediate aftermath of British Empire, and what the British told people was the truth about that event was very rapidly proved to be something very unlike the truth. I mean I remember in India as a child the history books changing from the ones that the British had left behind, to the ones that had been written after independence; and people who had been characterized as villains, were now characterized as heroes, because of their part in the independence struggle. So truth is a battle, and maybe never more so than now.
Reception
According to Book Marks, the book received "mixed" reviews based on twelve critic reviews, with one being "rave" and four being "positive" and four being "mixed" and three being "pan".[6][7][8]
In a lukewarm review for The New York Times, Dwight Garner described the book as "a defensive castling move", referring to the author's suggestion that the turn in literary culture from brio-filled imaginative writing toward the humbler delights of "autofiction" is the reason for misunderstanding and mistreatment of his works. Garner compares the book with one of Rushdie's previous ones, Imaginary Homelands, saying: "Back then Rushdie wrote nonfiction for editors, not for foundations and colleges", and although then "he was not a major critic" he was "a strong one". Garner goes on to conclude: "If his arguments about the state of fiction in Languages of Truth don't convince, at least they're genuine signs of life."[9]
Paul Perry, in The Independent, described the book as interesting, engaging and entertaining, mentioning that many of the essays were delivered as lectures and "even though they have been revised for print they maintain a kind of erudite breeziness in their tone".[10]