'Being a father changed my writing'

Salman Rushdie is apologetic. His publishers hadn't factored in that America had gone into 'daylight saving time' and so he called me 40 minutes earlier than originally planned. But when the '+401' number from New York flashed on my mobile, I wasn't unprepared, having helped myself with a glass of what I had read somewhere to be the 63-year-old writer's favourite drink: Jameson on the rocks.

After the disrupting force of The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie had written his first children's book, the 1990 Haroun and the Sea of Stories. That novel had been written for his then 11-year-old son Zafar after he had wanted to read something by his father that 'children could read'. Twenty years later, Rushdie's out with Luka and the Fire of Life, this time for his younger son Milan. "He told me that it was time he had a book written for him too," says Rushdie, who presented the manuscript to Milan on his 12th birthday.

Full report here Hindustan Times