The cautious traveller's guide to the WastelandsIt is the end of the 19th century and the world is awash with marvels. But there is nothing so marvellous as the Wastelands: a terrain of terrible miracles that lies between Beijing and Moscow. Nothing touches this abandoned wilderness except the Great Trans Siberian Express: an impenetrable train built to carry cargo across continents, but which now transports anyone who dares to cross the shadowy Wastelands. On to the platform steps a curious cast

When Isaac Addy walks into the woods on the worst day of his life and finds something extraordinary there

and that precious realisation - I'm not the only one who feels like this

Do you have a female brain or a male brain

and what we must do to fix them

'Anatomical Oddities' is an artistic and linguistic adventure

OUR STOP and LOVE ACTUALLY

and Vivian and her girlfriends mean to down New York to its last drop

an illiterate urchin

orbit the Shakespearean moons of Uranus and meet several pigs with wings

But a secret is like a knot

the country's being rocked by an apparently random string of terror attacks

Salman Rushdie answers violence with art