Salman Rushdie

Rushdie's novel The Moor's Last Sigh culminates in the search for a portrait that has been painted over. His starting point for the book was his interest in a real lost portrait – one of his mother, painted some fifty years ago. Unfolding a tale as fabulous as Rushdie's fiction, this programme travels to India in search of this painting. Meanwhile, in London, the author talks about The Moor's Last Sigh and the extraordinary conditions in which it was written. As he speaks, he himself is being painted by Bhupen Khakar, one of his favourite Indian artists.