Arena — Season 1, Episode 522: Salman Rushdie and the Ground beneath His Feet
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
In Salman Rushdie 's new novel The Ground beneath Her Feet. singer Vina Aspara is caught up in an earthquake on Valentine's Day 1989, and never seen again. On that day Rushdie's own life was in unheaval as Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced the fatwa upon him. Rushdie talks to Francine Stock about the novel. There is also an interview with U2 singer Bono, who has based a song around lyrics from the book, and performs it with guitarist the Edge.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.