Skip to Content

'30 years loving being a novelist'

15 July 2013

'I've spent 30 years loving being a novelist. It's bullshit to say that I think television has superseded the novel. It's just not what I think. Of course it's exciting to do something on this scale in a medium I've never worked in; and, yes, I've talked about TV dramas being comparable to novels, in that you have the length for complex storylines and characters. But I would never say they have replaced novels. There's room for both.'

I remember when V S Naipaul said the novel was dead. I wrote a piece saying it wasn't. I have never thought it was, and it's ridiculous for me to have to defend the novel again. I try to speak carefully and to tell the truth; it couldn't be more irritating to be misrepresented in this way.'

Salman Rushdie in The Times