Date: Tue, 2 Jan 1996 07:40:24 -0800 From: brians-AT-wsu.edu (Paul Brians) Subject: The Moor's Last Sigh My enterprising daughter managed to import from Britain a copy of Salman Rushdie's new novel, _The Moor's Last Sigh_ to give me for Christmas. I've just finished it, and thought I would share a few notes on it. It is reminiscent of _Midnight's Children_, but it lacks the strong political themes of that novel. Besides various asides aimed at the Gandhis, its most pointed political passage is a brief section dealing with the communal violence over the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya and the subsequent bombings in Bombay. The style is Rushdie's but the content is strikingly similar to John Irving's _A Son of the Circus_, a similarity Rushdie notes by making a subtle allusion to that novel on p. 264, where he lists various fictional detectives, including "Inspector Dhar," one of the main characters in Irving's novel. Zeenat Vakil, a name familiar from _Satanic Verses_, turns up again, this time as a contemporary art critic who uses language familiar to subscribers to this list: "Imperso-Nation and Dis/Semi/Nation: Dialogics of Eclecticism and Interrogations of Authenticity in A. Z" ( p. 329, spoofing Bhabha, right? "A. Z." is Aurora Zagoiby, the protagonist's mother and a modern artist). Rushdie makes a couple of allusions to the Internet and the Web (a nightclub is called "The World Wide Web"). I would be very surprised if he wasn't exploring the Internet quite a lot, given his isolated circumstances; though I doubt he'd subscribe to this list because of security reasons. Despite the fact that his work has been rejected by some Indian critics as the work of a hostile emigre/outsider, it strongly resembles in content and attitude a number of other contemporary Indian novels. It might almost have been written to refute the argument that Rushdie is not a truly Indian writer. Paul Brians, Department of English,Washington State University Pullman, WA 99164-5020 brians-AT-wsu.edu http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005