The book includes pieces written between 2003 and 2020, many of them never previously in print and engaging with a variety of subjects such as
storytelling,
literature,
culture,
myths,
language,
migration and
censorship. In the book, Rushdie celebrates the potential of stories as catalysts for nourishing the imagination. He suggests that adults lose some of the awe children have for repeated stories with which they fall in love. Languages of truth reflects on novels and novelists ranging from
Leo Tolstoy,
Philip Roth,
Cervantes and
Samuel Beckett to
Kurt Vonnegut. There are also some pieces on painters like
Amrita Sher-Gil and
Bhupen Khakhar, In an interview about his book with
Amanpour & Company, Rushdie says: I grow up in
India the immediate aftermath of
British Empire, and what the British told people was the truth about that event was very rapidly proved to be something very unlike the truth. I mean I remember in India as a child the history books changing from the ones that the British had left behind, to the ones that had been written after independence; and people who had been characterized as villains, were now characterized as heroes, because of their part in the independence struggle. So truth is a battle, and maybe never more so than now. ==Reception==