Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a British Indian novelist and essayist. In 1983 Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the UK's senior literary organisation. In June 2007, Queen Elizabeth II knighted him for his services to literature. The enormous ambition required by a project of those dimensions is evident in the complex intermixture of themes in The Ground Beneath Her Feet. The novel is set in a parallel universe, as revealed in the second half of the book. Thus, there are several historic events that are altered in the setting of the novel. In the novel, American president John F. Kennedy survives the Dallas assassination but is shot alongside his brother Robert Kennedy later on; the Watergate scandal is represented as a novel starring a fictional president Richard Nixon. Rushdie also deliberately miscredits some classic rock songs, such as The Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction", which he credits to John Lennon, or Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" which he credits to The Kinks. At the beginning of the novel, Vina Apsara, a famous and much-loved singer, is caught up in a devastating earthquake and never seen again by human eyes. This is her story, and that of Ormus Cama, the lover who finds, loses, seeks and again finds her, over and over, throughout his own extraordinary life in music: the story of a love that extends across their entire lives, and even beyond death… You can listen online to free English audiobook “The Ground Beneath Her Feet” by Salman Rushdie on our website.
