SOURCE: "Salman Rushdie, Out and About," in Washington Post, January 20, 1996, p. C1.

In the following review, discusses Rushdie's public promotion of The Moor's Last Sigh.

Salman Rushdie was in town this week to promote his new novel, The Moor's Last Sigh, and promote it he did. He appeared on the Diane Rehm radio talk show and made a much-publicized appearance at the National Press Club and answered questions and signed books and dined with the Washington literati.

He seemed to enjoy the attention and adulation immensely. He is a polite, but immodest, man. He does not hesitate to speak of himself and James Joyce or Marcel Proust in the same sentence.

Critics are lining up to praise him. A "wonderstruck" reviewer in The Washington Post proclaimed Rushdie "one of the world's great writers" and a writer in the New York Times said the novel, "as a work of...