Imaginary Homelands

{{Short description|Essay collection including commonwealth literature does not exist}}{{Infobox book

| image = ImaginaryHomelands.jpg

| author = Salman Rushdie

| isbn = 9780140140361

| pub_date = 1991

| caption = First edition cover

| publisher = Granta in association with Penguin Books

}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

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Imaginary Homelands is a collection of essays and criticism by Salman Rushdie.{{Cite book |last=Rushdie |first=Salman |title=Imaginary Homelands – essays and criticism 1981-1991 |publisher=Granta in association with Penguin |year=1991 |isbn=9780140140361 |location=London}}

The collection is composed of essays written between 1981 and 1992, including pieces of political criticism – e.g. on the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the Conservative 1983 General Election victory, censorship, the Labour Party, and Palestinian identity – as well as literary criticism – e.g. on V. S. Naipaul, Graham Greene, Julian Barnes, and Kazuo Ishiguro among others.

The title essay – "Imaginary Homelands" – was originally published in the London Review of Books on 7 October 1982.{{Cite magazine |last=Rushdie |first=Salman |date=7 October 1982 |title=Imaginary Homelands |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v04/n18/salman-rushdie/imaginary-homelands |magazine=London Review of Books |volume=4 |issue=18}} Comparing his work Midnight's Children to other works that draw on diaspora as a central theme, Rushdie argues that the migrant – whether from one country to another, from one language or culture to another or even from a traditional rural society to a modern metropolis – "is, perhaps, the central or defining figure of the twentieth century."