Review: Salman Rushdie’s first novel since he was attacked is a tale of magic
That horrific ordeal inspired a momentary surge of noble declarations about the sanctity of freedom of expression. But writers around the world continue to be harassed, jailed and even killed for their work. And in the United States, religious fanatics and their most cynical political allies have discovered that banning books, condemning writers and threatening librarians remain effective tactics for raising money and spreading their propaganda.
In the mid-1980s, UNESCO declared the ruins on the banks of the Tungabhadra a World Heritage site. While that reclamation project continues, Rushdie offers this equally ambitious reclamation of the imagination. Posing as a mere translator and summarizer, he treads lightly, interrupting only rarely to note some strange lacuna in the original text or to offer a bit of editorial guidance.
At such moments — and they’re frequent in “Victory City” — Rushdie’s magical style unfurls wonders. Within an hour after scattering the seeds, “the air began to shimmer,” he writes, and a spectacular city thrust out of the rocky ground — from the royal palace to the Monkey Temple, the canopied market stalls and the aristocrats’ villas, along with thousands and thousands of people “born full-grown from the brown earth, shaking the dirt off their garments, and thronging the streets.
Throughout Pampa’s travails, one force proves most poisonous to her own hopes and the city’s survival: religious intolerance. And Rushdie is at his best and most experienced when he deconstructs the foundations of militant spiritual purity. Despite Pampa’s best efforts, in each new generation private resentments, inadequacies and fears lure people into cults of extremism.
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