Read & Reviewed by Paul (Bookseller); Salman Rushdie at his best celebrating India's rich and diverse culture. Victory City is a dazzling novel that explores the complex and turbulent history of India through the lives of four generations of a family. Once again he is skillfully weaving together the personal and the political, the historical and the mythical, the tragic and the comic in a sweeping saga that rivals Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" in its scope and ambition. If you enjoyed his previous novels "Shalimar the Clown", "Midnight's Children", "The Moor's last sigh" then Victory City will be like coming home, and yet leave you longing to travel to mystical India.
An epic tale with a message for us all- our power is fleeting, but our stories last forever. This is Salman Rushdie at his best. A magical realist feminist tale in an historical setting that will stay with you long after you turn the final page. The epic tale of a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries - from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie.
In the wake of an insignificant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for the goddess Parvati, who begins to speak out of the girl's mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana's comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga - literally 'victory city' - the wonder of the world. Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana's life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga's, from its literal sowing out of a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways- the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on the task that Parvati set for her- to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry - with Pampa Kampana at its center.
Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, this is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is in itself a testament to the power of storytelling.
Fiction: general and literary, Historical fiction, Fantasy, Traditional stories - myths and fairy tales
Paperback
Salman Rushdie
352 pages
H: 234mm W: 153mm Spine: 25mm
Weight: 428 grams