A good book is one you recognise instantly. It’s alive. It grabs you from the first page and swirls you around, making you meet familiar people and showing you secrets about yourself that you may not have wanted to admit. A good book makes you feel euphoric. There are lines you want to read again because it’s been said better than you could have said it. There are paragraphs you want to share with a beloved. Rushdie’s Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights gets your heart to soar.

Salman Rushdie (L) receives Denmark's top literary award, the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award, handed by Danish Crown Princess Mary (R) in August 2014, near Copenhagen. PIC/AFP