I think obviously a lot of it was research, more research than I've ever done in my life before. But you have to reach a point where you set the research aside and just write it. And when I reached that moment, of feeling that I knew the subject well enough to do that, then it became a lot of fun, because as you say, yes, it is, I hope, the only one of my books you could describe as rollicking.

Ramona Koval It is rollicking. You introduce us to Akbar, who was a real historical character. He was quite a man. Tell us about why you were drawn to him and to telling your version of his story.

Salman Rushdie Well he is really quite a remarkable figure. He looms very large in the imagination of everybody in India, because you get taught him intensively in school, in the way that English children get taught about Elizabeth I—whose exact contemporary he was, by the way. And he was physically a very large man, he was very powerful, he was known to throw his enemies head-first off roofs. But at the same time (he was also illiterate, by the way) but despite this he was a man of quite exceptional culture and sophistication who really in many ways created the country of India, because under him was when a very large part of the country was unified. And it wasn't just a question of winning battles, he was also remarkably tolerant. Instead of executing his defeated rivals, he tended to give them a job in the government and marry their daughters.

He also was internally...I mean I've gone into his mind to talk about what was really there, which was a kind of anguish about how to be good, about how to be a just ruler, and beyond that about how to achieve a world of religious tolerance and how to create an open culture. He was also quite a lot of fun, because the court at that time was astonishingly sensualist and hedonistic. The quantities of opium and alcohol being consumed, even by relatively young people, would be absolutely horrifying to us.

Intervju ur australiska radiokanalen ABCs The Book Show