Award-winning author Salman Rushdie joins Shad to discuss Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights — his surreal new novel, narrated by our future descendents.

Rushdie takes us into the world of his story, complete with moody genies, magic babies and monstrous storms. Although the writer says he wants to create "a world gone wrong", he hasn't given up hope for humanity. In this book he challenged himself to come up with a more hopeful future than it seems like we're headed for.

"History isn't inevitable. It's not on tramlines," he says. "If you're not imagining a better world, you can't bring it into being."