To honour the memory of legendary publisher and writer Roberto Calasso, who passed away last year, ICI London has lovingly restored an exclusive recording of an event that took place in our rooms in 1999: a conversation between the late author, Salman Rushdie and Marina Warner about the English edition of his novel Ka: Stories of the Mind and Gods of India, introduced by the then Director of ICI London Benedetta Bini.
You can now watch it on our Vimeo channel, click HERE
Roberto Calasso was born in Florence in 1941 in a house of academics and scholars, and grew up “surrounded by books”. In In 1962, he became an editor at Adelphi Edizioni, the publishing house established that year, becoming its editorial Director in 1968. Adelphi has been a leading and iconic publishing house since, publishing works by the likes of Georges Simenon, Bruce Chatwin and Milan Kundera. He published his first novel in 1974 L’impuro folle (“The Impure Madman”) and went on to publish numerous more works of fiction and non-fiction.
Sir Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1947 and is Indian-born British author. He studied at the University of Cambridge and published his first Novel, Grimus, in 1975. In 1981, he won the Booker Prize with his second novel Midnight’s Children, which was voted by the public “the best novel of all winners” on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize. Rushdie has written 14 novels as well as stories and non-fiction works, and his books have been translated into over forty languages.
Dame Marina Warner, DBE, FRSL, FBA, is a novelist, art critic, cultural historian and short story writer. She is known for her studies of myths and fairy tales, including Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. Her essays and reviews have appeared in several prestigious publications. Her many awards include the Fawcett Society Book Prize, the National Book Critics Circle award, the Holberg Prize and most recently, the Acqui Storia prize for lifetime achievement. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, London, and a Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and was made DBE in 2015 for services to higher education and literature. In 2017 she was elected first female President of the Royal Society of Literature.