Jan 07, 2016 07:21 PM
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It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this delightful novel, the second by the novelist Salman Rushdie and by far his best, mirrors the life of India as a young republic more accurately than any other work of art. It features in almost all the "Best of." lists about contemporary English Literature, and has been awarded not just the Booker, but also "Best of Booker" and "Booker of Bookers". There are good reasons for why it is such an acclaimed book.
It is important to not just situate this work in the genre of post-colonial literature, which is something reviewers and literary critics have done far too often, so much so that much of scholarship that exists on the book almost compulsively includes the term "post-colonialism". It is important to consider it a whole in itself, and not just a part of a wider phenomenon. Its context might be post-imperial in nature, but the work itself is universal.
The language is, first and foremost, delightful and energetic. Rushdie emulates the Jewish North American literary tradition, exemplified by such towering figures as Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, of unapologetically importing the syntax, idiom and vocabulary of the languages that inhabit the places in the story. Bellow and Roth did it with Yiddish and Rushdie does it with a number of dialects, including the Mumbaiyya slang that is such a prominent feature of Mumbai streets. It lends the work raw enthusiasm and authenticity.
The characters Rushdie has created are unforgettable, a good example being Salim Sinai, who is in a number of ways the alter-ego of the country he is born in and with. The character of Tai is an early pleasure in the reading of this novel. Other characters come and go, and come back again, but Tai haunts the book like a never-dying ghost. He is undoubtedly my favorite character in the story.
James Wood has often referred to the literary style Rushdie adopts as hysterical realism, while others are content with placing it in the tradition of magic realism that rose to prominence amid the Latin American literary boom. I find Wood's assessment rather unfair. For many of us who've grown up in India, it reads much like plain old realism, because the phantasmagorical is so inseparable a part of the ordinary lived experience. And it is for this reason that the book speaks for us, and will continue to do so.
Highly recommended.
