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The Moor's Last Sigh
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Moraes 'Moor' Zogoiby is a 'high-born crossbreed', the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinise spice merchants and crime lords. He is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he leaves behind a labyrinthine tale of mad passions and volcanic family hatreds, of titanic matriarchs and their mesmerised offspring, of premature deaths and curses that strike beyond the grave. The Moor's Last Sigh is a spectacularly ambitious, funny, satirical and compassionate novel. It is a love song to a vanishing world, but also its last hurrah.
~from the back cover
Moraes 'Moor' Zogoiby is a 'high-born crossbreed', the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinise spice merchants and crime lords. He is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he leaves behind a labyrinthine tale of mad passions and volcanic family hatreds, of titanic matriarchs and their mesmerised offspring, of premature deaths and curses that strike beyond the grave. The Moor's Last Sigh is a spectacularly ambitious, funny, satirical and compassionate novel. It is a love song to a vanishing world, but also its last hurrah.
~from the back cover
434 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
587 people are currently reading
14.2k people want to read
About the author
Salman Rushdie
156books12.5kfollowersSir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2023.
Rushdie's personal life, including his five marriages and four divorces, has attracted notable media attention and controversies, particularly during his marriage to actress Padma Lakshmi.
After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2023.
Rushdie's personal life, including his five marriages and four divorces, has attracted notable media attention and controversies, particularly during his marriage to actress Padma Lakshmi.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 839 reviews
March 22, 2019
If love is not all, then it is nothing: this principle, and its opposite (I mean, infidelity), collide down all the years of my breathless tale.
And breath-taking it was, this epic saga on the rise, thriving and fall of four generations of an eccentric, wealthy Indian family - at least, such is the imprint the novel left on me, having read it about twenty years ago.
Deception, hatred, revenge and murder are the ingredients of an exhilarating story ultimately revolving around love: scorching pepper love, motherly love, love of beauty and art (one of the characters, Aurora Zogoiby, is inspired by the painter Amrita Sher-Gil). Like in and , Rushdie emerges as a fabulous storyteller, sailing airily on the waves of his powerful imagination and wit when interweaving the fortunes of the da Gama-Zogoiby families with twentieth century Indian history and religious issues (Partition, Hindu nationalism), blending fiction and real historical events.
I wanted to cling to the image of love as the blending of spirits, as mélange, as the triumph of the impure, mongrel, conjoining best of us over what there is in us of the solitary, the isolated, the austere, the dogmatic, the pure; of love as democracy, as the victory of the no-man-is-an-island, two’s-company Many over the clean, mean, apartheiding Ones. I tried to see lovelessness as arrogance, for who but the loveless could believe themselves complete, all-seeing, all-wise? To love is to lose omnipotence and omniscience. Ignorantly is how we all fall in love; for it is a kind of fall. Closing our eyes, we leap from that cliff in hope of a soft landing. Nor is it always soft; but still, I told myself, still, without that leap nobody comes to life. The leap itself is a birth, even when it ends in death, in a scramble for white tablets, and the scent of bitter almonds on your beloved’s breathless mouth.
The vigorous narrative pace, the kaleidoscopic range, the alluring settings (Cochin, Bombay, Spain) and Rushdie’s characteristic style and prose (almost baroque, surrealistic, fast, dancing forwards, recoiling, tiptoeing sideways, digressing, almost baroque, coloured with word play and amusing references to film, music and literature) left me bedazzled and somewhat word-enebriated. Though the story lines and the many characters have mostly faded, I remember my younger self adored the flavour of Salman Rushdie’s writing, wondering now if the more mature reader self still would be enraptured by his spicy exuberance.
Als liefde niet alles is, dan is ze niets.
Bedrog, haat, wraak en moord vormen de ingrediënten van een spannend verhaal waarin alles uiteindelijk om de liefde draait: verzengende peperliefde, moederliefde, liefde voor schoonheid en kunst. Rushdie is een rasverteller met een uitzonderlijk rijke verbeelding. Luchtig en spitsvondig verweeft hij de lotgevallen van de families Da Gama en Zogoiby met de Indiase geschiedenis en religieuze kwesties. Rushdies taal is zwierig, bijna barok en krioelt van woordspelletjes en persiflerende verwijzingen naar film, muziek en literatuur. Een wervelend boek dat je onderdompelt in een heel eigen wereld.
And breath-taking it was, this epic saga on the rise, thriving and fall of four generations of an eccentric, wealthy Indian family - at least, such is the imprint the novel left on me, having read it about twenty years ago.
Deception, hatred, revenge and murder are the ingredients of an exhilarating story ultimately revolving around love: scorching pepper love, motherly love, love of beauty and art (one of the characters, Aurora Zogoiby, is inspired by the painter Amrita Sher-Gil). Like in and , Rushdie emerges as a fabulous storyteller, sailing airily on the waves of his powerful imagination and wit when interweaving the fortunes of the da Gama-Zogoiby families with twentieth century Indian history and religious issues (Partition, Hindu nationalism), blending fiction and real historical events.
I wanted to cling to the image of love as the blending of spirits, as mélange, as the triumph of the impure, mongrel, conjoining best of us over what there is in us of the solitary, the isolated, the austere, the dogmatic, the pure; of love as democracy, as the victory of the no-man-is-an-island, two’s-company Many over the clean, mean, apartheiding Ones. I tried to see lovelessness as arrogance, for who but the loveless could believe themselves complete, all-seeing, all-wise? To love is to lose omnipotence and omniscience. Ignorantly is how we all fall in love; for it is a kind of fall. Closing our eyes, we leap from that cliff in hope of a soft landing. Nor is it always soft; but still, I told myself, still, without that leap nobody comes to life. The leap itself is a birth, even when it ends in death, in a scramble for white tablets, and the scent of bitter almonds on your beloved’s breathless mouth.
The vigorous narrative pace, the kaleidoscopic range, the alluring settings (Cochin, Bombay, Spain) and Rushdie’s characteristic style and prose (almost baroque, surrealistic, fast, dancing forwards, recoiling, tiptoeing sideways, digressing, almost baroque, coloured with word play and amusing references to film, music and literature) left me bedazzled and somewhat word-enebriated. Though the story lines and the many characters have mostly faded, I remember my younger self adored the flavour of Salman Rushdie’s writing, wondering now if the more mature reader self still would be enraptured by his spicy exuberance.
Als liefde niet alles is, dan is ze niets.
Bedrog, haat, wraak en moord vormen de ingrediënten van een spannend verhaal waarin alles uiteindelijk om de liefde draait: verzengende peperliefde, moederliefde, liefde voor schoonheid en kunst. Rushdie is een rasverteller met een uitzonderlijk rijke verbeelding. Luchtig en spitsvondig verweeft hij de lotgevallen van de families Da Gama en Zogoiby met de Indiase geschiedenis en religieuze kwesties. Rushdies taal is zwierig, bijna barok en krioelt van woordspelletjes en persiflerende verwijzingen naar film, muziek en literatuur. Een wervelend boek dat je onderdompelt in een heel eigen wereld.
June 14, 2017
The novel was an anomaly for me. 5* for a book that I abandoned when I reached the middle and resumed reading after more than a year. It was probably the only book that I've abandoned and continued after some time. So glad I did it. Magical realism at its best.
February 7, 2024
The Moor's Last Sigh begins in southern India, narrated by a picaresque hero in whose veins Portuguese, Jewish, Arab, and Indian blood runs (a representation of an individual who escapes the narrow classifications of all nationalist, ethnic, and religious sectarianisms), in a time when independence was still a dream for Indians. The work outlines an adventure that passes through the fairy-tale Bombay of the 80s and 90s and ends in southern Spain, in the shadow of the Alhambra.
In 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced Salman Rushdie to death for writing The Satanic Verses, a work that deeply displeased Islamic fundamentalists. The author's response was this novel: a blunt defense of the virtues of pluralism and tolerance, as opposed to dictators' unique and exclusionary truths.
In 1988, Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced Salman Rushdie to death for writing The Satanic Verses, a work that deeply displeased Islamic fundamentalists. The author's response was this novel: a blunt defense of the virtues of pluralism and tolerance, as opposed to dictators' unique and exclusionary truths.
February 17, 2013
This is another hard book to rate and review. Rushdie is a smart, ingenious and purposeful writer. Everything is cleverly thought out and his use of language is magical. He bends the words with ease and brings out richer meanings. The plot is an original story that unfolds as a series of riddles to a satirical account of modern India.
Yet, in spite of all that, the book did not click with me.
The characters remain puppets. As exotic cartoons they act out a sort of fable that sometimes appears without direction. The novel seems another example of what is by now a well-established genre in the literature of the subcontinent, that of magical allegories of the history of its Independence. Rushdie may have been the pioneer of this trend with his “Midnight Children�. I preferred the earlier novel.
In this genre I also liked Shashi Tharoor's , in which he mixes the Mahabharata with the account of the Partition.
Since Rushdies’s Enchantress of Florence is on my bookshelves anyway, I will certainly read one more of his books and hopefully will like it better.
But here is a brilliant review of the Moor that does the book better justice:
Yet, in spite of all that, the book did not click with me.
The characters remain puppets. As exotic cartoons they act out a sort of fable that sometimes appears without direction. The novel seems another example of what is by now a well-established genre in the literature of the subcontinent, that of magical allegories of the history of its Independence. Rushdie may have been the pioneer of this trend with his “Midnight Children�. I preferred the earlier novel.
In this genre I also liked Shashi Tharoor's , in which he mixes the Mahabharata with the account of the Partition.
Since Rushdies’s Enchantress of Florence is on my bookshelves anyway, I will certainly read one more of his books and hopefully will like it better.
But here is a brilliant review of the Moor that does the book better justice:
September 9, 2019
This is a catastrophe!
I didn't add a review when I finished reading The Moor's Last Sigh, thus depriving myself of the only relatively secure method of remembering a Salman Rushdie novel in detail. Well, maybe not detail, but at least in broad strokes.
As it is now, my empty brain will have to reread instead of just quickly checking what I hoped would be a gushing review matching the stars.
The Reader's Last Sigh! To be reread, a quixotic quest for lost memory of reading pleasure past.
I didn't add a review when I finished reading The Moor's Last Sigh, thus depriving myself of the only relatively secure method of remembering a Salman Rushdie novel in detail. Well, maybe not detail, but at least in broad strokes.
As it is now, my empty brain will have to reread instead of just quickly checking what I hoped would be a gushing review matching the stars.
The Reader's Last Sigh! To be reread, a quixotic quest for lost memory of reading pleasure past.
September 27, 2015
I admit that I had already given The Moor‘s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie a couple of unsuccessful tries before I finally challenged myself to reading it in one go a couple of weeks ago. It seemed just the right time to plunge into something by Rushdie after I unexpectedly met him at a conference he was giving in Madrid as part of the World Book Day celebration.
And yes, it was a big challenge. If one can love and hate a book at the same time, admire and despise it, crave for more and wish to finish it immediately, then I experienced it as well while turning the pages of The Moor‘s Last Sigh. I couldn‘t but admire Rushdie‘s genius, his boundless imagination and his capacity to interweave the lives of the characters of the book and the historical facts into one single fabric full of new colors. And at the same time I hated the slowness of the plot, which became even slower mixed with my incapacity to read Rusdhie‘s ornate language faster.
I loved how the author‘s experienced hand mixed classes, religions, ethnic groups, politics, business, crime and art. And I pitied my lack of knowledge of the historical and political context, which made me miss a lot of allusions and connotations that would have made more sense for somebody living in India.
I was tired of long sentences. And I relished the poetry of the language.
I chose to quote one single sentence, which resumes everything I tried to say in this review, and everything I was not able to express:
“And if the flies buzzed in through the opened netting-windows, and the naughty gusts through the parted panes of leaded glass, then opening of the shutters let in everything else: the dust and the tumult of boats in Cochin harbour, the horns of freighters and tugboat chugs, the fishermen’s dirty jokes and the throb of their jellyfish stings, the sunlight as sharp as a knife, the heat that could choke you like a damp cloth pulled tightly around your head, the calls of floating hawkers, the wafting sadness of the unmarried Jews across the water in Mattancherri, the menace of emerald smugglers, the machinations of business rivals, the growing nervousness of the British colony in Fort Cochin, the cash demands of the staff and of the plantation workers in the Spice Mountains, the tales of Communist troublemaking and Congresswallah politics, the names Gandhi and Nehru, the rumours of famine in the east and hunger strikes in the north, the songs and drum-beats of the oral storytellers, and the heavy rolling sound (as they broke against Cabral Island’s rickety jetty) of the incoming tides of history.�
Give it a try. Or a few. You’ll love it or you’ll hate it. Or both.
Oh, and if you are not sure what a palimpsest is, this book will teach you everything you need to know about it, I promise.
And yes, it was a big challenge. If one can love and hate a book at the same time, admire and despise it, crave for more and wish to finish it immediately, then I experienced it as well while turning the pages of The Moor‘s Last Sigh. I couldn‘t but admire Rushdie‘s genius, his boundless imagination and his capacity to interweave the lives of the characters of the book and the historical facts into one single fabric full of new colors. And at the same time I hated the slowness of the plot, which became even slower mixed with my incapacity to read Rusdhie‘s ornate language faster.
I loved how the author‘s experienced hand mixed classes, religions, ethnic groups, politics, business, crime and art. And I pitied my lack of knowledge of the historical and political context, which made me miss a lot of allusions and connotations that would have made more sense for somebody living in India.
I was tired of long sentences. And I relished the poetry of the language.
I chose to quote one single sentence, which resumes everything I tried to say in this review, and everything I was not able to express:
“And if the flies buzzed in through the opened netting-windows, and the naughty gusts through the parted panes of leaded glass, then opening of the shutters let in everything else: the dust and the tumult of boats in Cochin harbour, the horns of freighters and tugboat chugs, the fishermen’s dirty jokes and the throb of their jellyfish stings, the sunlight as sharp as a knife, the heat that could choke you like a damp cloth pulled tightly around your head, the calls of floating hawkers, the wafting sadness of the unmarried Jews across the water in Mattancherri, the menace of emerald smugglers, the machinations of business rivals, the growing nervousness of the British colony in Fort Cochin, the cash demands of the staff and of the plantation workers in the Spice Mountains, the tales of Communist troublemaking and Congresswallah politics, the names Gandhi and Nehru, the rumours of famine in the east and hunger strikes in the north, the songs and drum-beats of the oral storytellers, and the heavy rolling sound (as they broke against Cabral Island’s rickety jetty) of the incoming tides of history.�
Give it a try. Or a few. You’ll love it or you’ll hate it. Or both.
Oh, and if you are not sure what a palimpsest is, this book will teach you everything you need to know about it, I promise.
March 29, 2023
Multi-generational story of the da Gama Family, Portuguese colonial spice traders in Cochin. The last of the da Gamas is Moraes, the narrator, who is called the ‘Moor�. Many references (including the title) to Boabdil, the last moorish king of Granada. Highly informative, funny, and inventive writing.
August 11, 2014
The Moor’s Last Sigh is a colorful, hard-hitting excursion into India. Squeezed into a paperback, it spans nearly a century, and through the tumultuous history of the Zogoibys as they enlarge their pepper trade in Cochin (wasn’t it with spices, the ‘hot� pepper that it all started?) to a national scale diversification of all kinds of ‘spices� of life, cruising through the intense political scenes of Independence movement to newly-acquired freedom to communal bloodshed to Indira Gandhi-led Emergency to the proliferation of the Mumbai Underworld Mafia in the 1980s and the 1990s with a parallel Upperworld Political communal Mafia, Rushdie, the master puppeteer creates a show where the Zogoibys, as Kalliope rightly points out, are the puppets of Mother India, the various myths that Mother India is, the various false myths Mother India is, and also the children of that passionately loving, passionately cruel Mother that are entranced and entrapped, approaching their doom with double the speed they are supposed to travel, and all by their own terrified consent.
Like the Moor’s tale, my own take on the tale is anything but coherent, scattered like Moor’s loose pages all over the place, messy and chaotic. Allegorical to Mother India. Full of magical-realism, it is a realism that seems magical to the onlookers, a tragi-comedy, a tragedy to the characters, a farce to the readers, a drudge to the living. Written in 1995, this is Rushdie’s first novel after The Satanic Verses, that forced an author underground because he chose to speakofy his mind not in hush-hush barely-decipherable ambiguous impotent tones but in an in-your-face to-hell-with-you don’t-askofy-if-you-don’t-want-the-bleddy-truth profane potent portent loudspeaker style. It was not Moor who was exiled by his Mother Aurora da-Gama Zogoiby, but the Unlucky (Zogoiby in Arabic) Rushdie, the Indian bastard (or as Rushdie-Moor likes it, baas stink, turd no translation needed) of a non-Indian community who was disowned and thrown out by Mother India, hurtling towards an imminent death perhaps at double the speed of his biological life-span, cursed by another Mother-Rumpelstiltskin who wanted him all for herself.
The Moor’s tale, then, is not just an allegory to Modern Mother India, or to her unfortunate children, but also particularly to one special crippled child Rushdie himself, betrayed by his mother, his housekeeper Miss Jaya He (see the point? It is a phrase in the National Anthem, loosely meaning Victory/Hail! -to who-else-but-Mom-India?), by his only lover artist Uma Sarasvati (Two Indian Goddesses in one � Uma, the wife of Shiv-who-destroys Sarasvati, the incarnation of knowledge, therefore, the brilliant girl who destroyed Moor), and lastly, by his own Muse Vasco Miranda (an allusion to another profane blasphemous Indian artist M.F. Hussain, exiled by our Mom?) for whom Moor’s mother Aurora was once his own Muse.
Where to start? After all this long dithering, I haven’t startofied my review yet. When Moor’s own tale is all over the place, how do I know where to begin? When the tale itself is a pastiche, a random sticking of images and histories that has its own method to madness, when there is no clear beginning but only a vertigo where anything can come first, beware, O Readers, I too will stick-o-fy my point wherever I wish, like Moor stickofies one page of his tale to a tree and the other to a wall and a third to a well until they’re all over Benengeli, and don’t point-o-fy your fingers at me if you don’t like my jabberings lest I Jaw-Jaw at you like that now-stuffed dog.
Ah, but it all began with the spicy “spices� trade, didn’t it? The Portuguese had the hots for all our hot stuff and came here crossing half the world for a pinch of pepper. And then the Jews, the exiles from their own Mothers came sailing and sat down in Cochin, becoming the Cochin Jews, and also came all the Portuguese Christians, all of them with their hidden mysteries that led them here, and went into the
pepper trade. So here we come to the Portuguese Epifania and Francisco da Gama in the early 1900s with their children -Aires who married Carmen-Aunt Sahara, the flat barren desert who was never touched by her homo husband and so never reaped the fortune that lay between her legs, a legal heir, and Camoens, who married Belle who made both boobies and babies with her hubby to bring forth Mother Aurora who would marry a Cochin Jew who�. But, like Moor, I’m getting ahead of my tale.
While we witness the interesting, hilarious events of the da-Gama family as Belle wages war against the dominating matriarch epiphany Epifania, what we witness in the in-house separation (Belle, Camoens,
Francisco going anti-British-Simon-go-back, Epifania-Aires-Carmen going The-Brits-gave-us-what-all-we-have)is a microcosm of an India torn into two factions � an elite pro-British bunch, especially Christians/Portuguese afraid of giving up their pretty Anglican ways simultaneously rightly fearing Indians in charge of India, and an optimistic pro-Independence pro-equality, softly flirtatiously Marxist, heavily nationalistic euphoric duds bunch rallying under the suave charm of the English-pruned Nehru and the rustic-once-upon a-time-Angrezi-imitator-now-desi-by-choice little naked man Gandhi in-a-loin-cloth.
The ballistic warfare in the da-Gama family that ends with Belle taking charge of the house and the business when national chaos descends and Aires and Camoens are dumped into jail for 15 years signals the victory of the INC, the Nehru-led Congress party that would replace the British in 1947. But as everyone knows, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru screwed up the nation that was put in his hands, that dilettante child of Macaulay who finally produced his dream Minuteman, Indians in blood and color, but English in choices and opinions, daydreaming of progress as the country burned and got beaten up in front of his closed sleeping dreaming eyes.
For all his failures, I now think, Rushdie has been really kind to him, only mocking him with semi-seriousness (Aires, out of contempt, names his bulldog Jawaharlal Jaw-Jaw to annoy the pro-Nehru family-members):
While the World Wars rage and the Independence movement gains momentum, Aurora grows up mother-less, not so much as motherless, as her Mummy Belle hunts business deals during the day and tigers to feed upon at night, with Camoens tucked away in jail. And when Belle dies after Camoens is released, Aurora, the 13-year old kid unleashes her week-long mourning in isolation by maddeningly painting her room, pouring forth vivid confusing images of the family yarn and weaving them onto a carpet of colors. At 15, she chooses the quiet Arab-Jew clerk Abraham Zogoiby, as old as her father as her lover, and while her father dies, she moves in with him, because she cannot marry him. In the book, this is quite an interesting, roaring episode, a great commentary on religious/cultural clashes, of standing up to one’s family for one’s right to love, of the great complicated affair a family is within the even more complicated nuances of age-old cultural rivalries, building upon Romeo and Juliet but our lovers are no Romeo or Juliet � if they cannot marry, they will not. But they will love. Not in their sacred hearts, but in their scandalous bodies. Not from their respective captive homes, but in the freedom of their house.
Let them make their own yarn. But welcome back to India. It’s an independent country now. Aurora has taken V. Miranda the artist under her wing and at the dinner table, newly-found freedom is being celebrated while Hindus and Muslims massacre each other in Kashmir. Miranda lashes out at the self-deceived foolery around him:
Why is Kashmir the point of contention between India and Pakistan, and not any other state, when there were and are so many other probable candidates too? It is because immediately after Independence when many states/kingdoms (Junagadh, Hyderabad, Kashmir...) wanted to be independent nations, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was appointed to unite them under India by hook or crook. Patel succeeded, but Nehru intervened. Instead of Sardar, Nehru wanted to be the one to convince Kashmir’s Hindu king, who ruled the state’s majority population of Muslims, to join India. Bleddy Reason: Nehru was a Kashmiri Pandit. He was so much in love with his state, the dudhead wanted the glory of salvaging his darling state and he messed it up with his ineptitude. And Hindus and Muslims, torn between India and Pakistan and the chance of becoming an independent entity, slaughtered each other, sending the nation into yet another bout of shock, paranoia, enmity and accusations. The riots haven’t yet ended � they have become more frequent, all over the country. And Vasco was right. Gods are useless. Money speaks. Bleddy money speaks and bleddy gods listen.
It was not an inebriated Miranda’s senseless tirade � it was a spectacular summing up of how India was doomed from the very start, and would pay heavily for the foundation it had achieved its Independence on. And the consequences, in Moor’s words, as we jump momentarily to the end of the novel which alludes to the turning points in India’s Communal history (the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992 by BJP-RSS-VHP political right-wing Hindu party, and the subsequent terror attacks by Muslim extremists in Mumbai particularly and riots all over the twin countries) are:
But warnings were given even earlier, when Aurora wasn’t even born, by Camoens, referring to the hymn beloved to Gandhi, that says Ram/Ishwar and Allah are one, the Hindu and Islamic gods are but different names for one god, predicting the events of 1992 when the Mosque was partially demolished on the argument that Lord Ram was born there 5000 years ago, where the 400 years old mosque now stood:
But back to old India, to the two Mothers that captured the imagination of real India, while Aurora takes hold of Moor and Moor’s life, in the middle of the 20th century. From Cochin, the story swiftly moves to Bombay as the Zogoiby family relocates there and the nation transitions from political babysteps to an enfant terrible, a socio-political menace in the dexterous, able hands of Rushdie’s flawlessly executed introduction � Aurora’s rebellious high-parapet frenzy blasphemous scandalizing dance in contempt of Maharashtra’s beloved Hindu festival, Ganesh Chaturthi, the celebration of the Elephant-headed god first used as a pretext for banned large-scale meetings by the freedom-fighter Lokmanya Tilak who fanned the flames of armed resistance against British Raj, then recently appropriated by the notorious political hard-liner party Shiv Sena to drive out poor non-Marathi migrant workers from the state, turning an innocent festival into the hotbed of religious frenzy and fanaticism and filthy opportunistic politics, where the two make unlikely but highly-compatible bedfellows.
Rushdie takes a dig at Shiv Sena founder, the cartoonist-turned-militant Bal Thackeray, mocking his ugliness by adding a nickname “Mainduck� (Frog in Hindi) to his fictitious name Raman Fielding, blatantly accusing his party of all the dirty politics they have played, transitioning from champions of Marathi culture and people to moral policing (read: lathi-charging young couples, married or unmarried, for holding hands in public on Valentine’s Day and beating the hell out of them if they become a bit cozy on other days too) to aligning with BJP-RSS-VHP and inciting communal hatred.
And coming to Bombay, (ooops! Mumbai now, unless you want Shiv Sena pulping you for the indiscretion) how can we forget our silver screen Mother now, Mother India, the quintessential tale of the Indian mother, Indian bride, Indian wife, Indianwoman (she doesn’t exist on her own, does she?), the quintessential tale of rural agricultural India, the quintessential tale of common man which the gripped the country’s imagination, with its spectacular pair of mother (played by Nargis) and rebellious son Birju (played by Sunil Dutt) who married soon in real life. The movie becomes a source of discussion for India, a metaphor for the imagined India that was so far removed from metropolitan India and yet survived through popular myth, through Metanarratives, as the essence of India. Juxtaposing the rural movie with the metro city, the fictional mother-son with real-life lovers, Aurora says, as Nargis and Sunil Dutt visit her home:
And now, Rushdie’s own careful comment on the movie, which can be seen both in and out of context of the novel:
And what about the other Mother India, the one that haunted real-life India? Indira Gandhi, daughter of Nehru, first female PM of India, the one who boldly broke the sanctions on India and went ahead to test India’s first nuclear device in Pokhran, and in 1975 she imposed the Emergency when it became clear that she would be removed from her post. Like Aurora, she is the heroine and the antiheroine, the mother and the anti-mother figure of India’s story. While the poor and the honest beg and die, or are executed, the rich and the corrupt oil each other and reap its dirty wealth. Abraham Zogoiby enters the Underworld negotiations and his business grows exponentially, while Aurora’s stars as the beloved Indian artist rise and sink and rise.
With Uma Sarasvati’s machinations that drive mother-and-son apart, Moor’s foray into Mainduck’s clan, his prodigal return to his father who then has no use for him and discards him for the second time, it is India we see, everywhere, everywhere. This isn’t a story about the Moor or the Zogoibys at all. It is Rushdie’s impeccable skills that make you think that it is about the characters caught up in a particularly eventful century.
Even though it is about India, the surface story never flags; the two are so closely intertwined together that they cannot be told without either going missing. Each one tells the other’s tale. And so, when the characters aren’t likeable enough, or deep enough, it is because they aren’t meant to be. Generalizations are never finely woven -like a summary, they have to span over a large slice of time and eschew much of finesse. And yet, the characters are deep enough, nuanced enough to keep the reader gripped in the surface story and not just let him/her slip into the metaphorical story of India.
And like the titular painting ‘The moor’s last sigh�, the final act of forgiveness that Aurora bestows upon her son Moor -India, and the Moor’s tale too is a palimpsest, a painting upon a painting, a
superimposition of one tale over the other. Two tales that have merged into one, even though they are different.
Why this deeper story masquerading so convincingly as the surface story, or vice-versa? Because, my dears, this is what India is. A visual deception, a deception nuanced, fine enough to send the unwary casual stroller on the wrong path. The Upperworld and the Underworld don’t just co-exist as allegories, they are the same story itself. They are not two sides of the same coin. It is not you-or-me, it is you-and-me. Their threads are so finely enmeshed that to destroy one is to destroy the other too. And so, readers, is Rushdie’s tale. The Zogoibys and India don’t just co-exist. The Zogoibys are not a metaphor for India, a microcosm, a summary of India, a representative of the land. It is not India simplified, India-for-Dummies guidebook. They and India are different, but part of the same story.
Review part 2 - /review/show...
Like the Moor’s tale, my own take on the tale is anything but coherent, scattered like Moor’s loose pages all over the place, messy and chaotic. Allegorical to Mother India. Full of magical-realism, it is a realism that seems magical to the onlookers, a tragi-comedy, a tragedy to the characters, a farce to the readers, a drudge to the living. Written in 1995, this is Rushdie’s first novel after The Satanic Verses, that forced an author underground because he chose to speakofy his mind not in hush-hush barely-decipherable ambiguous impotent tones but in an in-your-face to-hell-with-you don’t-askofy-if-you-don’t-want-the-bleddy-truth profane potent portent loudspeaker style. It was not Moor who was exiled by his Mother Aurora da-Gama Zogoiby, but the Unlucky (Zogoiby in Arabic) Rushdie, the Indian bastard (or as Rushdie-Moor likes it, baas stink, turd no translation needed) of a non-Indian community who was disowned and thrown out by Mother India, hurtling towards an imminent death perhaps at double the speed of his biological life-span, cursed by another Mother-Rumpelstiltskin who wanted him all for herself.
The Moor’s tale, then, is not just an allegory to Modern Mother India, or to her unfortunate children, but also particularly to one special crippled child Rushdie himself, betrayed by his mother, his housekeeper Miss Jaya He (see the point? It is a phrase in the National Anthem, loosely meaning Victory/Hail! -to who-else-but-Mom-India?), by his only lover artist Uma Sarasvati (Two Indian Goddesses in one � Uma, the wife of Shiv-who-destroys Sarasvati, the incarnation of knowledge, therefore, the brilliant girl who destroyed Moor), and lastly, by his own Muse Vasco Miranda (an allusion to another profane blasphemous Indian artist M.F. Hussain, exiled by our Mom?) for whom Moor’s mother Aurora was once his own Muse.
Where to start? After all this long dithering, I haven’t startofied my review yet. When Moor’s own tale is all over the place, how do I know where to begin? When the tale itself is a pastiche, a random sticking of images and histories that has its own method to madness, when there is no clear beginning but only a vertigo where anything can come first, beware, O Readers, I too will stick-o-fy my point wherever I wish, like Moor stickofies one page of his tale to a tree and the other to a wall and a third to a well until they’re all over Benengeli, and don’t point-o-fy your fingers at me if you don’t like my jabberings lest I Jaw-Jaw at you like that now-stuffed dog.
Ah, but it all began with the spicy “spices� trade, didn’t it? The Portuguese had the hots for all our hot stuff and came here crossing half the world for a pinch of pepper. And then the Jews, the exiles from their own Mothers came sailing and sat down in Cochin, becoming the Cochin Jews, and also came all the Portuguese Christians, all of them with their hidden mysteries that led them here, and went into the
pepper trade. So here we come to the Portuguese Epifania and Francisco da Gama in the early 1900s with their children -Aires who married Carmen-Aunt Sahara, the flat barren desert who was never touched by her homo husband and so never reaped the fortune that lay between her legs, a legal heir, and Camoens, who married Belle who made both boobies and babies with her hubby to bring forth Mother Aurora who would marry a Cochin Jew who�. But, like Moor, I’m getting ahead of my tale.
While we witness the interesting, hilarious events of the da-Gama family as Belle wages war against the dominating matriarch epiphany Epifania, what we witness in the in-house separation (Belle, Camoens,
Francisco going anti-British-Simon-go-back, Epifania-Aires-Carmen going The-Brits-gave-us-what-all-we-have)is a microcosm of an India torn into two factions � an elite pro-British bunch, especially Christians/Portuguese afraid of giving up their pretty Anglican ways simultaneously rightly fearing Indians in charge of India, and an optimistic pro-Independence pro-equality, softly flirtatiously Marxist, heavily nationalistic euphoric duds bunch rallying under the suave charm of the English-pruned Nehru and the rustic-once-upon a-time-Angrezi-imitator-now-desi-by-choice little naked man Gandhi in-a-loin-cloth.
The ballistic warfare in the da-Gama family that ends with Belle taking charge of the house and the business when national chaos descends and Aires and Camoens are dumped into jail for 15 years signals the victory of the INC, the Nehru-led Congress party that would replace the British in 1947. But as everyone knows, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru screwed up the nation that was put in his hands, that dilettante child of Macaulay who finally produced his dream Minuteman, Indians in blood and color, but English in choices and opinions, daydreaming of progress as the country burned and got beaten up in front of his closed sleeping dreaming eyes.
For all his failures, I now think, Rushdie has been really kind to him, only mocking him with semi-seriousness (Aires, out of contempt, names his bulldog Jawaharlal Jaw-Jaw to annoy the pro-Nehru family-members):
Shut up, Jaw-Jaw, you all-bark-no-bite-mutt�
Like Jaw-Jaw Jawaharlal, they made plenty of noise but didn’t draw much blood.
Panditji, Congress-tho is always chickening out in the face of radical acts. No soft options will be takeofied round here.
Once, indeed, there were giants on our stage; but at the fag-end of an age, Madam History must make do with what she can get. Jawaharlal, in these latter days, was just the name of a stuffed dog.(At this point in the story, the dog is dead and is stuffed by Aires to keep him “alive�, a brilliant metaphor by Rushdie.
While the World Wars rage and the Independence movement gains momentum, Aurora grows up mother-less, not so much as motherless, as her Mummy Belle hunts business deals during the day and tigers to feed upon at night, with Camoens tucked away in jail. And when Belle dies after Camoens is released, Aurora, the 13-year old kid unleashes her week-long mourning in isolation by maddeningly painting her room, pouring forth vivid confusing images of the family yarn and weaving them onto a carpet of colors. At 15, she chooses the quiet Arab-Jew clerk Abraham Zogoiby, as old as her father as her lover, and while her father dies, she moves in with him, because she cannot marry him. In the book, this is quite an interesting, roaring episode, a great commentary on religious/cultural clashes, of standing up to one’s family for one’s right to love, of the great complicated affair a family is within the even more complicated nuances of age-old cultural rivalries, building upon Romeo and Juliet but our lovers are no Romeo or Juliet � if they cannot marry, they will not. But they will love. Not in their sacred hearts, but in their scandalous bodies. Not from their respective captive homes, but in the freedom of their house.
Let them make their own yarn. But welcome back to India. It’s an independent country now. Aurora has taken V. Miranda the artist under her wing and at the dinner table, newly-found freedom is being celebrated while Hindus and Muslims massacre each other in Kashmir. Miranda lashes out at the self-deceived foolery around him:
’Useless fucking art-johnny clever-dicks,� he jeered. ‘Circular sexualist India my foot. No. Bleddy tongue-twister came out wrong. Secular socialist. That’s it. Bleddy bunk. Panditji sold you that stuff like a cheap watch salesman and you all bought one and now you wonder why it doesn’t work. Bleddy Congress party full of bleddy fake Rolex Salesman. You think India’ll just roll over, all those bloodthirsty bloodsoaked gods’ll just roll over and die […]
[…]And I’ll tell you something, Mr. Big Businessman Abie, let me give you a tip. Only one power in this damn country is strong enough to stand up against those gods and it isn’t blanket blank sockular specialism. It isn’t blanket blank Pandit Nehru and his blanket blank protection-of-minorities Congress watch-wallahs. You know what it is? I’ll tell you what it is. Corruption. You get me? Bribery […]
[…]One more thing, piece of good advice for you all. Get on the boats with the British! Just get on the bleddy boats and buggeroff. This place has no use for you. It’ll beat you and eat you. Get out! Get out
while the getting’s good.
Why is Kashmir the point of contention between India and Pakistan, and not any other state, when there were and are so many other probable candidates too? It is because immediately after Independence when many states/kingdoms (Junagadh, Hyderabad, Kashmir...) wanted to be independent nations, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was appointed to unite them under India by hook or crook. Patel succeeded, but Nehru intervened. Instead of Sardar, Nehru wanted to be the one to convince Kashmir’s Hindu king, who ruled the state’s majority population of Muslims, to join India. Bleddy Reason: Nehru was a Kashmiri Pandit. He was so much in love with his state, the dudhead wanted the glory of salvaging his darling state and he messed it up with his ineptitude. And Hindus and Muslims, torn between India and Pakistan and the chance of becoming an independent entity, slaughtered each other, sending the nation into yet another bout of shock, paranoia, enmity and accusations. The riots haven’t yet ended � they have become more frequent, all over the country. And Vasco was right. Gods are useless. Money speaks. Bleddy money speaks and bleddy gods listen.
It was not an inebriated Miranda’s senseless tirade � it was a spectacular summing up of how India was doomed from the very start, and would pay heavily for the foundation it had achieved its Independence on. And the consequences, in Moor’s words, as we jump momentarily to the end of the novel which alludes to the turning points in India’s Communal history (the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992 by BJP-RSS-VHP political right-wing Hindu party, and the subsequent terror attacks by Muslim extremists in Mumbai particularly and riots all over the twin countries) are:
Violence was violence, murder was murder, two wrongs did not make one right: these are truths of which I was fully cognizant. Also: by sinking to your adversary’s level you lose the high ground. In the days after the destruction of the Babri Masjid, ‘justly enraged Muslims�/‘fanatical killers� smashed up Hindu temples, and killed Hindus, across India and Pakistan as well. There comes a point in the unfurling of communal violence in which it becomes irrelevant to ask, ‘Who started it?� The lethal conjugations of death part company with any possibility of justification, let alone justice. They surge among us, left and right, Hindu and Muslim, knife and pistol, killing, burning, looting, and raising into the smoky air their clenched and bloody fists. Both their houses are damned by their deeds; both sides sacrifice the right to any shred of virtue; they are each other’s plagues.
But warnings were given even earlier, when Aurora wasn’t even born, by Camoens, referring to the hymn beloved to Gandhi, that says Ram/Ishwar and Allah are one, the Hindu and Islamic gods are but different names for one god, predicting the events of 1992 when the Mosque was partially demolished on the argument that Lord Ram was born there 5000 years ago, where the 400 years old mosque now stood:
And they say Ishwar and Allah is your name but they don’t mean it, they mean only Ram himself, king of the Raghu clan, purifier of sinners along with Sita. In the end I am afraid […] people like us will have to lock our doors and there will come a Battering Ram.�
But back to old India, to the two Mothers that captured the imagination of real India, while Aurora takes hold of Moor and Moor’s life, in the middle of the 20th century. From Cochin, the story swiftly moves to Bombay as the Zogoiby family relocates there and the nation transitions from political babysteps to an enfant terrible, a socio-political menace in the dexterous, able hands of Rushdie’s flawlessly executed introduction � Aurora’s rebellious high-parapet frenzy blasphemous scandalizing dance in contempt of Maharashtra’s beloved Hindu festival, Ganesh Chaturthi, the celebration of the Elephant-headed god first used as a pretext for banned large-scale meetings by the freedom-fighter Lokmanya Tilak who fanned the flames of armed resistance against British Raj, then recently appropriated by the notorious political hard-liner party Shiv Sena to drive out poor non-Marathi migrant workers from the state, turning an innocent festival into the hotbed of religious frenzy and fanaticism and filthy opportunistic politics, where the two make unlikely but highly-compatible bedfellows.
Rushdie takes a dig at Shiv Sena founder, the cartoonist-turned-militant Bal Thackeray, mocking his ugliness by adding a nickname “Mainduck� (Frog in Hindi) to his fictitious name Raman Fielding, blatantly accusing his party of all the dirty politics they have played, transitioning from champions of Marathi culture and people to moral policing (read: lathi-charging young couples, married or unmarried, for holding hands in public on Valentine’s Day and beating the hell out of them if they become a bit cozy on other days too) to aligning with BJP-RSS-VHP and inciting communal hatred.
And coming to Bombay, (ooops! Mumbai now, unless you want Shiv Sena pulping you for the indiscretion) how can we forget our silver screen Mother now, Mother India, the quintessential tale of the Indian mother, Indian bride, Indian wife, Indian
‘The first time I saw that picture�, she (Aurora) confided to the famous movie star (Nargis) on the high terrace at Elephanta, ‘I took one look at your Bad Son, Birju, and I thought, O boy, what a handsome guy � too much sizzle, too much chilli, bring water. He may be a thief and a bounder, but that is some A-class loverboy goods. And now look � you have gone and marry-o‘ed him! What sexy lives you movie people leadofy: to marry your own son, I swear, wowie.�
‘Even in the picture, but,� Aurora went relentlessly on, ‘I knew right off that bad Birju had the hots for his gorgeous ma.�
And now, Rushdie’s own careful comment on the movie, which can be seen both in and out of context of the novel:
In Mother India, a piece of Hindu myth-making directed by a Muslim socialist, Mehboob Khan, the Indian peasant woman is idealized as bride, mother and producer of sons; as long-suffering, stoical, loving, redemptive, and conservatively wedded to the maintenance of the status-quo. But for Bad Birju, cast out from his mother’s love, she becomes, as one critic has mentioned, ‘that image of an aggressive, treacherous, annihilating mother who haunts the fantasy life of Indian males.�
And what about the other Mother India, the one that haunted real-life India? Indira Gandhi, daughter of Nehru, first female PM of India, the one who boldly broke the sanctions on India and went ahead to test India’s first nuclear device in Pokhran, and in 1975 she imposed the Emergency when it became clear that she would be removed from her post. Like Aurora, she is the heroine and the antiheroine, the mother and the anti-mother figure of India’s story. While the poor and the honest beg and die, or are executed, the rich and the corrupt oil each other and reap its dirty wealth. Abraham Zogoiby enters the Underworld negotiations and his business grows exponentially, while Aurora’s stars as the beloved Indian artist rise and sink and rise.
With Uma Sarasvati’s machinations that drive mother-and-son apart, Moor’s foray into Mainduck’s clan, his prodigal return to his father who then has no use for him and discards him for the second time, it is India we see, everywhere, everywhere. This isn’t a story about the Moor or the Zogoibys at all. It is Rushdie’s impeccable skills that make you think that it is about the characters caught up in a particularly eventful century.
Even though it is about India, the surface story never flags; the two are so closely intertwined together that they cannot be told without either going missing. Each one tells the other’s tale. And so, when the characters aren’t likeable enough, or deep enough, it is because they aren’t meant to be. Generalizations are never finely woven -like a summary, they have to span over a large slice of time and eschew much of finesse. And yet, the characters are deep enough, nuanced enough to keep the reader gripped in the surface story and not just let him/her slip into the metaphorical story of India.
And like the titular painting ‘The moor’s last sigh�, the final act of forgiveness that Aurora bestows upon her son Moor -India, and the Moor’s tale too is a palimpsest, a painting upon a painting, a
superimposition of one tale over the other. Two tales that have merged into one, even though they are different.
Why this deeper story masquerading so convincingly as the surface story, or vice-versa? Because, my dears, this is what India is. A visual deception, a deception nuanced, fine enough to send the unwary casual stroller on the wrong path. The Upperworld and the Underworld don’t just co-exist as allegories, they are the same story itself. They are not two sides of the same coin. It is not you-or-me, it is you-and-me. Their threads are so finely enmeshed that to destroy one is to destroy the other too. And so, readers, is Rushdie’s tale. The Zogoibys and India don’t just co-exist. The Zogoibys are not a metaphor for India, a microcosm, a summary of India, a representative of the land. It is not India simplified, India-for-Dummies guidebook. They and India are different, but part of the same story.
Review part 2 - /review/show...
October 17, 2015
Review part 1 - /review/show...
So don’t let Rushdie fool you into thinking that “it is Moor/Zogoiby’s story and heck!, they’re somewhat flat, or Rushdie makes an allegory and fails on both counts � both the upperstory and understory are not
well-developed � happens when you want to ride two horses at once.� But, oh, dear, it is one horse, not two.
*sigh* this review just doesn’t end. But Rushdie is a crazy fellow, maker of an atom bomb � large scale destruction squeezed into a bomb the size of a fist. But I should end now, though I have a lot more to babble-o-fy about, I know�
What all did I like in this Rushdie, let me sum up fast � the blasphemy, the profanity, the creativity, the chutneyfication of language, the masterly interweaving of fact and fiction, the literary references generously peppered all over the hot, spicy dish, the scathing political references that only a bold, fearless, audacious and blasphemous person can dare to make. (Dear Indian, do you have the guts to call Hindustan Dumpistan?)
I’m quite surprised, (not really, when the readers do not have EXTENSIVE knowledge of India) that the book is rated badly or averagely. Let me tell you, even if it sounds pompous. I’ve read this book the 10th time today in 5 years. I read it for the first time just after I read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time. (How vastly different the tone, the manners, of the two books!) Then in two years, I read it 8 more times, until I got used to it. I’ve picked it up again after a gap of three years and am actually amazed by the fact that I’ve got a lot more out of this reading than any of those before. Simply because I am far better-armed with Indian History now than I was three years back. My recent obsession with Indian history, mythology and politics paid off today in very unexpected ways.
And yet, I still know I have failed to understand some points he made, and will need to read more history still. And much more of global popular and literary culture as well. I mean, I was introduced to
the legendary Johnny Cash and his civil war songs only two years back � how could I have discerned the reference 4-5 years ago when Rushdie brings in a new character, a businessman-cum-charming musician/guitarist singing country songs about trains, named Jimmy Cash (Cashondeliveri)?
So I still don’t know who Kekoo Mody is in real life, or Justice Kachrawala is (the Bofors scandal judge, I think) This little book, didn’t I say, is a dynamite filled to the brim with everything Rushdie could squeeze in�?
If A Fine Balance, a book I love immensely, is one of the finest pictures of the contradictions of modern India, A Moor’s Last Sigh too shares the pedestal. While AFB is stoic, serious and
mournful, MLS is loud-mouthed, comic and mocking. AFB is the incarnation of naked, unadulterated pain, but MLS is the incarnation of pain masquerading as comic, insincere blasphemy � the only way left
to tell honestly one’s sordid saga without making someone flinch. AFB is the ultimate Indian tragedy. MLS is the ultimate Indian tragi-comedy. Take away from it what you will.
(The review has ended. Don’t roll-o-fy your biggie eyes at me, you chose to read it, Sir-or-Madam, I didn’t force-o-fy your decision. I’m not the impotent Jaw-Jaw all-bark-no-bite-bitch, I bite-o-fy real hard, and I won’t bite so fast, and like little 13-year old Aurora who bide-o-fied her time to kill her grandma Epifania, I will bide-o my time too, to bite-o you. I’m no sweet Mother India).
So don’t let Rushdie fool you into thinking that “it is Moor/Zogoiby’s story and heck!, they’re somewhat flat, or Rushdie makes an allegory and fails on both counts � both the upperstory and understory are not
well-developed � happens when you want to ride two horses at once.� But, oh, dear, it is one horse, not two.
*sigh* this review just doesn’t end. But Rushdie is a crazy fellow, maker of an atom bomb � large scale destruction squeezed into a bomb the size of a fist. But I should end now, though I have a lot more to babble-o-fy about, I know�
What all did I like in this Rushdie, let me sum up fast � the blasphemy, the profanity, the creativity, the chutneyfication of language, the masterly interweaving of fact and fiction, the literary references generously peppered all over the hot, spicy dish, the scathing political references that only a bold, fearless, audacious and blasphemous person can dare to make. (Dear Indian, do you have the guts to call Hindustan Dumpistan?)
I’m quite surprised, (not really, when the readers do not have EXTENSIVE knowledge of India) that the book is rated badly or averagely. Let me tell you, even if it sounds pompous. I’ve read this book the 10th time today in 5 years. I read it for the first time just after I read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time. (How vastly different the tone, the manners, of the two books!) Then in two years, I read it 8 more times, until I got used to it. I’ve picked it up again after a gap of three years and am actually amazed by the fact that I’ve got a lot more out of this reading than any of those before. Simply because I am far better-armed with Indian History now than I was three years back. My recent obsession with Indian history, mythology and politics paid off today in very unexpected ways.
And yet, I still know I have failed to understand some points he made, and will need to read more history still. And much more of global popular and literary culture as well. I mean, I was introduced to
the legendary Johnny Cash and his civil war songs only two years back � how could I have discerned the reference 4-5 years ago when Rushdie brings in a new character, a businessman-cum-charming musician/guitarist singing country songs about trains, named Jimmy Cash (Cashondeliveri)?
So I still don’t know who Kekoo Mody is in real life, or Justice Kachrawala is (the Bofors scandal judge, I think) This little book, didn’t I say, is a dynamite filled to the brim with everything Rushdie could squeeze in�?
If A Fine Balance, a book I love immensely, is one of the finest pictures of the contradictions of modern India, A Moor’s Last Sigh too shares the pedestal. While AFB is stoic, serious and
mournful, MLS is loud-mouthed, comic and mocking. AFB is the incarnation of naked, unadulterated pain, but MLS is the incarnation of pain masquerading as comic, insincere blasphemy � the only way left
to tell honestly one’s sordid saga without making someone flinch. AFB is the ultimate Indian tragedy. MLS is the ultimate Indian tragi-comedy. Take away from it what you will.
(The review has ended. Don’t roll-o-fy your biggie eyes at me, you chose to read it, Sir-or-Madam, I didn’t force-o-fy your decision. I’m not the impotent Jaw-Jaw all-bark-no-bite-bitch, I bite-o-fy real hard, and I won’t bite so fast, and like little 13-year old Aurora who bide-o-fied her time to kill her grandma Epifania, I will bide-o my time too, to bite-o you. I’m no sweet Mother India).
November 4, 2021
His novels, which are partly a short course in the modern history of India, part of the tale of the Thousand and One Nights, are always a lament for the forever lost homeland (such an Indian analogue of Russia_which we have lost). You can love one thing from Rushdie and be indifferent to the other: readers and critics awarded the "Children of Midnight" Booker Booker,, Galina Yuzefovich highly appreciates "The Earth under her feet", and Igor Knyazev "Shalimar the Clown". I have a restrained affection for all three, but without enthusiasm, and I am in love with "Kishot", who, damn, has only one review hanging on the whole Lib for the third month. The audiobook has already come out completely magical, and I listened to it for the second time, and did not write about it just because it's embarrassing to post a second review when the first and only one is yours. So, this is all to the fact that Rushdie has a lot of fairy tales, for every taste, and he is an excellent storyteller.
"The farewell sigh of the Moor" is all about the same "oh, I woke up, sick": a family saga in exotic scenery; the fate of a family where everyone is a model of colorfulness, in the fate of a country for which the definition of "land of contrasts" seems to have been specially created. Every writer has signs by which he is unmistakably identified. Rushdie has this: stylistically flowery syllable with many allusions to the cultural heritage of the West and the East; thematically, a wealthy patriarchal Indian family whose talented educated offspring are experiencing the collapse of the former world order, to which they could adapt much more successfully if it were not for the vicious inclinations of some of its members. Often there is a child psychotrauma associated with sexual violence by someone from older relatives (if this is not directly mentioned, then they will certainly hint); there is someone incredibly rich (as an option - successful or invested with power; there is a mandatory femme fatal, no one can resist her charms.
В Индии жарко, а воздух пропитан специями
Ветер ли старое имя развеял?
Нет мне дороги в мой брошенный край.
Если увидеть пытаешься издали,
Не разглядишь меня, друг мой, прощай.
Рабиндранат Тагор "Последняя поэма"
В заглавии фрагмент разговора между малышкой Маргарет и полковником Брэндоном из "Разума и чувств" Джейн Остен. Не уверена. что в книге был этот диалог, там младшая из сестер Дэшвуд скорее создает фон. Но он есть в фильме: девочка, мечтающая о путешествиях пристает к пожилому человеку аж тридцати пяти лет, служившему в Индии, с вопросами об этой стране. И слышит в ответ самую банальную сентенцию про жару и пряности. Салман Рушди в каждой своей книге рассказывает об Индии, той же фразой, предельно развернутой в пространстве и времени.
Его романы, которые отчасти краткий курс новейшей истории Индии, частью сказки Тысячи и одной ночи - это всегда плач по навек утраченной родине (такой индийский аналог России_которую_мы_потеряли). Можно любить у Рушди что-то одно и быть равнодушной к другому: читатели и критики присудили "Детям полуночи" Букер Букеров,, Галина Юзефович высоко ценит "Землю под ее ногами", а Игорь Князев "Клоуна Шалимара". Я ко всем трем со сдержанной приязнью, но без восторга, а влюблена в "Кишота", у которого, блин, на целом Либе всего одна рецензия висит третий месяц. Уже и аудиокнига вышла совершенно волшебная, и я по второму разу послушала, и не написала о ней только потому, что неловко постить второй отзыв, когда первый и единственный твой. Так вот, это все к тому, что сказок у Рушди много, на любой вкус, а сторителлер он отменный.
"Прощальный вздох Мавра" все о том же: семейная сага в экзотических декорациях; судьба семьи, где всякий являет собой образец колоритности, в судьбе страны, для которой определение "земля контрастов" будто специально создано. У всякого писателя есть приметы, по которым он безошибочно опознается. У Рушди это: стилистически - цветистый слог со множеством аллюзий к культурному наследию Запада и Востока; тематически - обеспеченная патриархальная индийская семья чьи талантливые образованные отпрыски переживают крушение прежнего мироустройства, к которому могли бы приспособиться гораздо успешнее, когда бы не порочные наклонности некоторых ее членов. Часто присутствует детская психотравма, связанная с сексуальным насилием со стороны кого-то из старших родственников (если об этом не говорится напрямую, то уж намекнут непременно); есть некто невероятно богатый (как вариант - успешный или облеченный властью; есть обязательная femme fatal, перед ее чарами не может устоять никто.
И наконец, непременное магреалистическое допущение, некая особенность героя отделяющая его от остального человечества. Причем чаще всего этот род superpower в плане утилитарном бесполезен. Много ли могут извлечь из своей телепатии Дети полуночи? Что за радость садовнику из "Два года, десять месяцев и двадцать восемь ночей" от хождения по воздуху? Кишоту из одноименного романа создание Санчо буквально из ничего - из сильного желания и падучей звезды, счастья не приносит. Так и здешний юноша, прихотью материнской фантазии названный Мавром, рожден с особенностью, железным занавесом отделяющей его от остальных. Растет вдвое быстрее.
Родился четырехмесячным, но для новорожденного ненормально крупным, и за каждый год своей жизни взрослел на два. В "Сказке о Царе Салтане" когда "и растет ребенок там, не по дням, а по часам", это прикольно: законопатили в бочку с бессмысленным младенцем, а через пару дней мотания по волнам имеем добра молодца, который мать защитит, на трон воссядет, на волшебнице женится, это уж не говоря о ништяках вроде поющей белки с запасом изумрудных орехов. А теперь представьте человека, который в реальности растет быстрее. Разумом младенец, а выглядит ребенком, кроха, а окружающие принимают за подростка, начало пубертата, а кажешься всем молодым человеком. Дальше - больше. Сорокалетний к двадцати, а в тридцать шесть как за семьдесят - это ли не катастрофа?
Личная трагедия разворачивается на фоне обретения Индией независимости, которая, как вы помните, сопровождалась экономическим и властным коллапсом, многими беспорядками, рядом военных конфликтов с соседним Пакистаном, балансированием на грани гражданской войны. И Рушди не был бы самим собой, если бы не начал историю семей да Гама-Зогойби (торговцев специями - евреев-изгнанников) задолго до рождения Героя и четырех его сестер. Даже до рождения матушки их Авроры - гениальной художницы и потрясающей женщины, первой из двух роковых в этой книге. Второй будет Ума, единственная его любовь, прекрасное чудовище.
Не исключаю. что образ Мавра - это развернутая метафора для страны, которую форсированные обстоятельства заставили прыгнуть из пеленок в деловой костюм. Отсутствие достаточного опыта самостоятельного управления, ввергло в хаос некомпетентной коррумпированной власти. Впрочем, взгляд Рушди на положение вещей - это взгляд эмигранта, а со стороны видится не совсем то или совсем не то, что изнутри. В любом случа��, это высказывание имеет право на жизнь, тем более, что оно мастерски вплетено в захватывающую историю.
А подарком русскоязычному читателю стал перевод Леонида Мотылева, который эталонно хорош со всем, за что берется, вспомните "Бога мелочей" Арундати Рой (здесь, кстати, тоже появляется индийский Ленин, даже целых семь, и это уморительно смешной эпизод). Резюмируя: Салман Рушди крут, и он из тех, кто с годами даже лучше.
Знаю, когда-нибудь с дальнего берега. с давнего прошлого
Ветер весенний ночной принесет тебе вздох от меня.
"The farewell sigh of the Moor" is all about the same "oh, I woke up, sick": a family saga in exotic scenery; the fate of a family where everyone is a model of colorfulness, in the fate of a country for which the definition of "land of contrasts" seems to have been specially created. Every writer has signs by which he is unmistakably identified. Rushdie has this: stylistically flowery syllable with many allusions to the cultural heritage of the West and the East; thematically, a wealthy patriarchal Indian family whose talented educated offspring are experiencing the collapse of the former world order, to which they could adapt much more successfully if it were not for the vicious inclinations of some of its members. Often there is a child psychotrauma associated with sexual violence by someone from older relatives (if this is not directly mentioned, then they will certainly hint); there is someone incredibly rich (as an option - successful or invested with power; there is a mandatory femme fatal, no one can resist her charms.
В Индии жарко, а воздух пропитан специями
Ветер ли старое имя развеял?
Нет мне дороги в мой брошенный край.
Если увидеть пытаешься издали,
Не разглядишь меня, друг мой, прощай.
Рабиндранат Тагор "Последняя поэма"
В заглавии фрагмент разговора между малышкой Маргарет и полковником Брэндоном из "Разума и чувств" Джейн Остен. Не уверена. что в книге был этот диалог, там младшая из сестер Дэшвуд скорее создает фон. Но он есть в фильме: девочка, мечтающая о путешествиях пристает к пожилому человеку аж тридцати пяти лет, служившему в Индии, с вопросами об этой стране. И слышит в ответ самую банальную сентенцию про жару и пряности. Салман Рушди в каждой своей книге рассказывает об Индии, той же фразой, предельно развернутой в пространстве и времени.
Его романы, которые отчасти краткий курс новейшей истории Индии, частью сказки Тысячи и одной ночи - это всегда плач по навек утраченной родине (такой индийский аналог России_которую_мы_потеряли). Можно любить у Рушди что-то одно и быть равнодушной к другому: читатели и критики присудили "Детям полуночи" Букер Букеров,, Галина Юзефович высоко ценит "Землю под ее ногами", а Игорь Князев "Клоуна Шалимара". Я ко всем трем со сдержанной приязнью, но без восторга, а влюблена в "Кишота", у которого, блин, на целом Либе всего одна рецензия висит третий месяц. Уже и аудиокнига вышла совершенно волшебная, и я по второму разу послушала, и не написала о ней только потому, что неловко постить второй отзыв, когда первый и единственный твой. Так вот, это все к тому, что сказок у Рушди много, на любой вкус, а сторителлер он отменный.
"Прощальный вздох Мавра" все о том же: семейная сага в экзотических декорациях; судьба семьи, где всякий являет собой образец колоритности, в судьбе страны, для которой определение "земля контрастов" будто специально создано. У всякого писателя есть приметы, по которым он безошибочно опознается. У Рушди это: стилистически - цветистый слог со множеством аллюзий к культурному наследию Запада и Востока; тематически - обеспеченная патриархальная индийская семья чьи талантливые образованные отпрыски переживают крушение прежнего мироустройства, к которому могли бы приспособиться гораздо успешнее, когда бы не порочные наклонности некоторых ее членов. Часто присутствует детская психотравма, связанная с сексуальным насилием со стороны кого-то из старших родственников (если об этом не говорится напрямую, то уж намекнут непременно); есть некто невероятно богатый (как вариант - успешный или облеченный властью; есть обязательная femme fatal, перед ее чарами не может устоять никто.
И наконец, непременное магреалистическое допущение, некая особенность героя отделяющая его от остального человечества. Причем чаще всего этот род superpower в плане утилитарном бесполезен. Много ли могут извлечь из своей телепатии Дети полуночи? Что за радость садовнику из "Два года, десять месяцев и двадцать восемь ночей" от хождения по воздуху? Кишоту из одноименного романа создание Санчо буквально из ничего - из сильного желания и падучей звезды, счастья не приносит. Так и здешний юноша, прихотью материнской фантазии названный Мавром, рожден с особенностью, железным занавесом отделяющей его от остальных. Растет вдвое быстрее.
Родился четырехмесячным, но для новорожденного ненормально крупным, и за каждый год своей жизни взрослел на два. В "Сказке о Царе Салтане" когда "и растет ребенок там, не по дням, а по часам", это прикольно: законопатили в бочку с бессмысленным младенцем, а через пару дней мотания по волнам имеем добра молодца, который мать защитит, на трон воссядет, на волшебнице женится, это уж не говоря о ништяках вроде поющей белки с запасом изумрудных орехов. А теперь представьте человека, который в реальности растет быстрее. Разумом младенец, а выглядит ребенком, кроха, а окружающие принимают за подростка, начало пубертата, а кажешься всем молодым человеком. Дальше - больше. Сорокалетний к двадцати, а в тридцать шесть как за семьдесят - это ли не катастрофа?
Личная трагедия разворачивается на фоне обретения Индией независимости, которая, как вы помните, сопровождалась экономическим и властным коллапсом, многими беспорядками, рядом военных конфликтов с соседним Пакистаном, балансированием на грани гражданской войны. И Рушди не был бы самим собой, если бы не начал историю семей да Гама-Зогойби (торговцев специями - евреев-изгнанников) задолго до рождения Героя и четырех его сестер. Даже до рождения матушки их Авроры - гениальной художницы и потрясающей женщины, первой из двух роковых в этой книге. Второй будет Ума, единственная его любовь, прекрасное чудовище.
Не исключаю. что образ Мавра - это развернутая метафора для страны, которую форсированные обстоятельства заставили прыгнуть из пеленок в деловой костюм. Отсутствие достаточного опыта самостоятельного управления, ввергло в хаос некомпетентной коррумпированной власти. Впрочем, взгляд Рушди на положение вещей - это взгляд эмигранта, а со стороны видится не совсем то или совсем не то, что изнутри. В любом случа��, это высказывание имеет право на жизнь, тем более, что оно мастерски вплетено в захватывающую историю.
А подарком русскоязычному читателю стал перевод Леонида Мотылева, который эталонно хорош со всем, за что берется, вспомните "Бога мелочей" Арундати Рой (здесь, кстати, тоже появляется индийский Ленин, даже целых семь, и это уморительно смешной эпизод). Резюмируя: Салман Рушди крут, и он из тех, кто с годами даже лучше.
Знаю, когда-нибудь с дальнего берега. с давнего прошлого
Ветер весенний ночной принесет тебе вздох от меня.
December 11, 2018
I was 7 years old when I was told that Bombay was now renamed as Mumbai. I remember being confused, at that tender, impressionable age, about what should I call the beloved city where I was born. Would it be Mumbai or would it be Bombay? I still prefer using the latter name but today, after having discovered and read about how the city had changed in all these years, I find myself wondering this: was it just the name that was changed?
It was Salman Rushdie's 'The Moor's Last Sigh' which answered that question for me and indeed, the truth was difficult to digest. The Bombay of this evocative, frequently beautiful and brilliantly written novel witnesses glory in the past, in the freewheeling exuberance of the 1950s and 1960s, populated by snobbish filmstars, belligerent artists, shrewd crime overlords and happily corrupt policemen, a city of vice and opportunity, of both high art and ghetto aesthetic, of both elitist social gatherings on Sundays at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse and elaborate Ganesh Chaturthi processions, both of which still happen today in my city. Rushdie's uncanny awareness of Bombay's sights, sounds, sensations and smells is that spot-on even today.
We see the initially steady rise of this city paralleled with the onslaught of regional sectarianism and a cut-throat capitalist attitude, two forces that together diminished the easy-going and all-inclusive outlook of Bombay. We see all this through the eyes of its warped protagonist Moraes Zogoiby, the book's titular Moor, the Boabdil of the narrative who sighs wistfully when he witnesses the fortress of his own city besieged by forces that would bring it down.
Politically, like 'Shame', this is one of Rushdie's most astute and resonant novels. He wrote it in the 1990s, just the decade when India embraced the culture and technology of the West to a relentless degree and also the regrettable communal political agenda that divided the masses on lines of religion and historical legacy. This was the time when the mere question of the Babri Masjid built on the birth site of Lord Ram exploded into a blood-splattered travesty across the breadth of the nation and even led, more disastrously, to the bitter and calculated vengeance that left my city ablaze and brought down to its knees.
With ingenious, intuitive skills, the author devises extraordinary allusions and metaphors, which are as sharp as sublime; the fortress of Granada, which the Moor has to surrender and vacate, becomes the Bombay that Moraes has to leave in the end, when he is condemmned as an outcaste to this country and his own family. Before that, however, we are tugged on a whirlwind narrative that shuttles from the by-lanes of Cochin sweltering in the sun and the pungent fragrance of spices to the glitzy Bombay populated by cameos from Sunil and Nargis Dutt and even cricketing legend Abbas Ali Baig, from the gritty, seedier side of the city with its fist-fighting gangsters, textile mill strikes and its rabble-rousing cartoonist-turned-politician to the unexpected climax in Andalusia where the book becomes, unexpectedly, a dark revenge drama. It is not just a thrilling, giddy overload of information, pop culture reference and intensity; it is also painfully romantic and sensuous in the true Bombay fashion, from afternoon tuition that turns into a ritual of sexual discovery to the fervour of erotic couplings in the waiting rooms of the city's many train stations.
And above all, it is a devastating tragedy. More than his other novels, which have a vivid sense of celebration even in their darkest moments, this is Rushdie's saddest work yet. Its broken heart is located in its author's favourite theme of a state of exile and displacement from one's home.
In the middle of the narrative, the author doffs his hat at one of the greatest short stories ever written
and in the midst of that story, which was about the crippling consequence of Partition, he locates its own real point of emotional conflict as well - that of predicament of not being here or there but in a perennial state of no-man's land. 'The Moor's Last Sigh' is also about that predicament and like the gibberish that the character of that story speaks in anguish, it is the Moor's sigh that feels like the wistful sigh of pain and regret.
It was Salman Rushdie's 'The Moor's Last Sigh' which answered that question for me and indeed, the truth was difficult to digest. The Bombay of this evocative, frequently beautiful and brilliantly written novel witnesses glory in the past, in the freewheeling exuberance of the 1950s and 1960s, populated by snobbish filmstars, belligerent artists, shrewd crime overlords and happily corrupt policemen, a city of vice and opportunity, of both high art and ghetto aesthetic, of both elitist social gatherings on Sundays at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse and elaborate Ganesh Chaturthi processions, both of which still happen today in my city. Rushdie's uncanny awareness of Bombay's sights, sounds, sensations and smells is that spot-on even today.
We see the initially steady rise of this city paralleled with the onslaught of regional sectarianism and a cut-throat capitalist attitude, two forces that together diminished the easy-going and all-inclusive outlook of Bombay. We see all this through the eyes of its warped protagonist Moraes Zogoiby, the book's titular Moor, the Boabdil of the narrative who sighs wistfully when he witnesses the fortress of his own city besieged by forces that would bring it down.
Politically, like 'Shame', this is one of Rushdie's most astute and resonant novels. He wrote it in the 1990s, just the decade when India embraced the culture and technology of the West to a relentless degree and also the regrettable communal political agenda that divided the masses on lines of religion and historical legacy. This was the time when the mere question of the Babri Masjid built on the birth site of Lord Ram exploded into a blood-splattered travesty across the breadth of the nation and even led, more disastrously, to the bitter and calculated vengeance that left my city ablaze and brought down to its knees.
With ingenious, intuitive skills, the author devises extraordinary allusions and metaphors, which are as sharp as sublime; the fortress of Granada, which the Moor has to surrender and vacate, becomes the Bombay that Moraes has to leave in the end, when he is condemmned as an outcaste to this country and his own family. Before that, however, we are tugged on a whirlwind narrative that shuttles from the by-lanes of Cochin sweltering in the sun and the pungent fragrance of spices to the glitzy Bombay populated by cameos from Sunil and Nargis Dutt and even cricketing legend Abbas Ali Baig, from the gritty, seedier side of the city with its fist-fighting gangsters, textile mill strikes and its rabble-rousing cartoonist-turned-politician to the unexpected climax in Andalusia where the book becomes, unexpectedly, a dark revenge drama. It is not just a thrilling, giddy overload of information, pop culture reference and intensity; it is also painfully romantic and sensuous in the true Bombay fashion, from afternoon tuition that turns into a ritual of sexual discovery to the fervour of erotic couplings in the waiting rooms of the city's many train stations.
And above all, it is a devastating tragedy. More than his other novels, which have a vivid sense of celebration even in their darkest moments, this is Rushdie's saddest work yet. Its broken heart is located in its author's favourite theme of a state of exile and displacement from one's home.
In the middle of the narrative, the author doffs his hat at one of the greatest short stories ever written
and in the midst of that story, which was about the crippling consequence of Partition, he locates its own real point of emotional conflict as well - that of predicament of not being here or there but in a perennial state of no-man's land. 'The Moor's Last Sigh' is also about that predicament and like the gibberish that the character of that story speaks in anguish, it is the Moor's sigh that feels like the wistful sigh of pain and regret.
January 13, 2018
Gripping and whimsical story spanning a century of one Indian family's business, artistic, and leisure endeavors. Rushdie's writing is like candy, with sweet turns-of-phrase and quirky Dickensian characters, leaving the reader craving the next page. With Garcia Marquez-ish elements of magical realism and a pervading sinister feeling, like Dumas.
October 17, 2015
1st part of the review - /review/show...
So don’t let Rushdie fool you into thinking that “it is Moor/Zogoiby’s story and heck!, they’re somewhat flat, or Rushdie makes an allegory and fails on both counts � both the upperstory and understory are not
well-developed � happens when you want to ride two horses at once.� But, oh, dear, it is one horse, not two.
*sigh* this review just doesn’t end. But Rushdie is a crazy fellow, maker of an atom bomb � large scale destruction squeezed into a bomb the size of a fist. But I should end now, though I have a lot more to babble-o-fy about, I know�
What all did I like in this Rushdie, let me sum up fast � the blasphemy, the profanity, the creativity, the chutneyfication of language, the masterly interweaving of fact and fiction, the literary references generously peppered all over the hot, spicy dish, the scathing political references that only a bold, fearless, audacious and blasphemous person can dare to make. (Dear Indian, do you have the guts to call Hindustan Dumpistan?)
I’m quite surprised, (not really, when the readers do not have EXTENSIVE knowledge of India) that the book is rated badly or averagely. Let me tell you, even if it sounds pompous. I’ve read this book the 10th time today in 5 years. I read it for the first time just after I read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time. (How vastly different the tone, the manners, of the two books!) Then in two years, I read it 8 more times, until I got used to it. I’ve picked it up again after a gap of three years and am actually amazed by the fact that I’ve got a lot more out of this reading than any of those before. Simply because I am far better-armed with Indian History now than I was three years back. My recent obsession with Indian history, mythology and politics paid off today in very unexpected ways.
And yet, I still know I have failed to understand some points he made, and will need to read more history still. And much more of global popular and literary culture as well. I mean, I was introduced to
the legendary Johnny Cash and his civil war songs only two years back � how could I have discerned the reference 4-5 years ago when Rushdie brings in a new character, a businessman-cum-charming musician/guitarist singing country songs about trains, named Jimmy Cash (Cashondeliveri)?
So I still don’t know who Kekoo Mody is in real life, or Justice Kachrawala is (the Bofors scandal judge, I think) This little book, didn’t I say, is a dynamite filled to the brim with everything Rushdie could squeeze in�?
If A Fine Balance, a book I love immensely, is one of the finest pictures of the contradictions of modern India, A Moor’s Last Sigh too shares the pedestal. While AFB is stoic, serious and
mournful, MLS is loud-mouthed, comic and mocking. AFB is the incarnation of naked, unadulterated pain, but MLS is the incarnation of pain masquerading as comic, insincere blasphemy � the only way left
to tell honestly one’s sordid saga without making someone flinch. AFB is the ultimate Indian tragedy. MLS is the ultimate Indian tragi-comedy. Take away from it what you will.
(The review has ended. Don’t roll-o-fy your biggie eyes at me, you chose to read it, Sir-or-Madam, I didn’t force-o-fy your decision. I’m not the impotent Jaw-Jaw all-bark-no-bite-bitch, I bite-o-fy real hard, and I won’t bite so fast, and like little 13-year old Aurora who bide-o-fied her time to kill her grandma Epifania, I will bide-o my time too, to bite-o you. I’m no sweet Mother India).
So don’t let Rushdie fool you into thinking that “it is Moor/Zogoiby’s story and heck!, they’re somewhat flat, or Rushdie makes an allegory and fails on both counts � both the upperstory and understory are not
well-developed � happens when you want to ride two horses at once.� But, oh, dear, it is one horse, not two.
*sigh* this review just doesn’t end. But Rushdie is a crazy fellow, maker of an atom bomb � large scale destruction squeezed into a bomb the size of a fist. But I should end now, though I have a lot more to babble-o-fy about, I know�
What all did I like in this Rushdie, let me sum up fast � the blasphemy, the profanity, the creativity, the chutneyfication of language, the masterly interweaving of fact and fiction, the literary references generously peppered all over the hot, spicy dish, the scathing political references that only a bold, fearless, audacious and blasphemous person can dare to make. (Dear Indian, do you have the guts to call Hindustan Dumpistan?)
I’m quite surprised, (not really, when the readers do not have EXTENSIVE knowledge of India) that the book is rated badly or averagely. Let me tell you, even if it sounds pompous. I’ve read this book the 10th time today in 5 years. I read it for the first time just after I read To Kill A Mockingbird for the first time. (How vastly different the tone, the manners, of the two books!) Then in two years, I read it 8 more times, until I got used to it. I’ve picked it up again after a gap of three years and am actually amazed by the fact that I’ve got a lot more out of this reading than any of those before. Simply because I am far better-armed with Indian History now than I was three years back. My recent obsession with Indian history, mythology and politics paid off today in very unexpected ways.
And yet, I still know I have failed to understand some points he made, and will need to read more history still. And much more of global popular and literary culture as well. I mean, I was introduced to
the legendary Johnny Cash and his civil war songs only two years back � how could I have discerned the reference 4-5 years ago when Rushdie brings in a new character, a businessman-cum-charming musician/guitarist singing country songs about trains, named Jimmy Cash (Cashondeliveri)?
So I still don’t know who Kekoo Mody is in real life, or Justice Kachrawala is (the Bofors scandal judge, I think) This little book, didn’t I say, is a dynamite filled to the brim with everything Rushdie could squeeze in�?
If A Fine Balance, a book I love immensely, is one of the finest pictures of the contradictions of modern India, A Moor’s Last Sigh too shares the pedestal. While AFB is stoic, serious and
mournful, MLS is loud-mouthed, comic and mocking. AFB is the incarnation of naked, unadulterated pain, but MLS is the incarnation of pain masquerading as comic, insincere blasphemy � the only way left
to tell honestly one’s sordid saga without making someone flinch. AFB is the ultimate Indian tragedy. MLS is the ultimate Indian tragi-comedy. Take away from it what you will.
(The review has ended. Don’t roll-o-fy your biggie eyes at me, you chose to read it, Sir-or-Madam, I didn’t force-o-fy your decision. I’m not the impotent Jaw-Jaw all-bark-no-bite-bitch, I bite-o-fy real hard, and I won’t bite so fast, and like little 13-year old Aurora who bide-o-fied her time to kill her grandma Epifania, I will bide-o my time too, to bite-o you. I’m no sweet Mother India).
April 6, 2024
This book was my introduction to Salman Rushdie's writing. I'm sad that it didn't fully captivate me.
September 18, 2023
‘I turned seventy on New Year’s Day 1992, at the age of thirty-five.�
Moraes ‘Moor� Zogoiby has a condition that accelerates his growth. If that is not enough he also has a large club like deformed hand. The story is based on his narration of his life story and that of his family generations.
My first Rushdie. My wife said start with this one. Brilliant, powerful, sprawling. Incredible language and characters. Reminded me of Dickens in some of the grotesque character descriptions.
Left with a feeling of having read something really special. And of course the image of a stuffed dog being wheeled around.
Moraes ‘Moor� Zogoiby has a condition that accelerates his growth. If that is not enough he also has a large club like deformed hand. The story is based on his narration of his life story and that of his family generations.
My first Rushdie. My wife said start with this one. Brilliant, powerful, sprawling. Incredible language and characters. Reminded me of Dickens in some of the grotesque character descriptions.
Left with a feeling of having read something really special. And of course the image of a stuffed dog being wheeled around.
April 30, 2017
Amongst the pantheon of great Indian writers- Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai, R.K Narayan, Vikram Seth and Rohinton Mistry, none of them explore the fantastical nature of Indian society like Rushdie-whereas the Indian narrative form is often too deeply-rooted in Anglo-Saxon realism, Rushdie’s imagination is far more febrile and free-wheeling, like Marquez, Rushdie’s stories focus on social and political commentary via the form of magical realism and no other Indian author’s novels are populated with as an eccentric (though not necessarily well-rounded) case of characters as Rushdie-perhaps the word ‘character� is incorrect, rather Rushdie’s characters serve as caricatures by which he is able to explore the social dynamics of Indian society.
The story follows Moraes ‘Moor� Zogoiby, scion of a wealthy Indian Jewish-Christian family; deformed and club-handed and left tumescent by story-telling, Moor’s metabolic rate causes him to age twice faster than normal and so the narrative races through the history of Moor’s family-from his great-grandparents the de Gamas, to his father, Abraham, a shadowy character with tenuous links to the Mumbai underworld and his mother, Aurora, a painter of macabre, Goya-esque paintings and whose belligerence and indifference to motherhood upend typical Indian conventions on motherhood. In fact most of the novel counteracts conventions on Indian women; the two avant-garde Indian artists, Aurora and Uma, are both female and the novel is dominated by matriarchal characters-however their form of matriarchy is domineering and selfish as much as it is protective or maternal-Abraham’s mother, Flory, forces him to sell his male heir to her in exchange for cash and the vindictive witch-like spectre of Epefania Menezes hovers over the early pages of the novel. Even the peripheral characters-from Moor’s gay great-uncle Aires, to the insouciant beauty queen Nadia Wadia, defy conventions and indeed as with many other Rushdie novels, the subject of post-colonialism and religious extremism are the dominant themes within the novel. In this case Hindu fundamentalism is castigated via the character of Raman Fielding, an erstwhile cartoonist transformed into a Hindu nationalist, Rushdie explores the seeds of the nationalistic fervour which is increasingly dominating Indian society, in the early stages of the independence movement and the affect their dogmatic and parochial views have on the minorities they persecuted-in this case the Jewish, Christian and Islamic communities of southern India.
‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’is probably Rushdie’s most well-rounded and profound book and one of the greatest works of modern Indian literature.
The story follows Moraes ‘Moor� Zogoiby, scion of a wealthy Indian Jewish-Christian family; deformed and club-handed and left tumescent by story-telling, Moor’s metabolic rate causes him to age twice faster than normal and so the narrative races through the history of Moor’s family-from his great-grandparents the de Gamas, to his father, Abraham, a shadowy character with tenuous links to the Mumbai underworld and his mother, Aurora, a painter of macabre, Goya-esque paintings and whose belligerence and indifference to motherhood upend typical Indian conventions on motherhood. In fact most of the novel counteracts conventions on Indian women; the two avant-garde Indian artists, Aurora and Uma, are both female and the novel is dominated by matriarchal characters-however their form of matriarchy is domineering and selfish as much as it is protective or maternal-Abraham’s mother, Flory, forces him to sell his male heir to her in exchange for cash and the vindictive witch-like spectre of Epefania Menezes hovers over the early pages of the novel. Even the peripheral characters-from Moor’s gay great-uncle Aires, to the insouciant beauty queen Nadia Wadia, defy conventions and indeed as with many other Rushdie novels, the subject of post-colonialism and religious extremism are the dominant themes within the novel. In this case Hindu fundamentalism is castigated via the character of Raman Fielding, an erstwhile cartoonist transformed into a Hindu nationalist, Rushdie explores the seeds of the nationalistic fervour which is increasingly dominating Indian society, in the early stages of the independence movement and the affect their dogmatic and parochial views have on the minorities they persecuted-in this case the Jewish, Christian and Islamic communities of southern India.
‘The Moor’s Last Sigh’is probably Rushdie’s most well-rounded and profound book and one of the greatest works of modern Indian literature.
September 10, 2008
The Moor's Last Sigh is Rushdie's best book since and is superior to . Rushdie puts his spin on the multi-generational family novel. Like most such novels, it takes awhile to get the characters and families straight, but once you have the whole picture, you can begin to enjoy the magic that Rushdie is weaving through this genre. His first-person narrator ranges from funny to absurd to cruel, and Rushdie's playfulness with language is in full force here. As in Midnight's Children, Rushdie's characters are set in the context of India's turbulent history, and in typical Rushdie fashion, it isn't clear whether history is affecting the family or the family is molding history. The very end of the book seems a bit over-blown, but it's one of the few weaknesses in this very good novel.
October 5, 2016
هل هذه الرواية هي أفضل ما كتبه سلمان رشدي؟.. لا أدري ولكنها مزيج ساحر وباهر جدا من الواقعية السحرية (سلمان رشدي هو أحد أساتذة هذا الفن مع ماركيز وغونتر غراس وميخائيل بولغاكوف) والملاحم العائلية اللذيذة والميلودرامية وتمتزج مع أسلوب سلمان رشدي الفكاهي والمضحك في تناول تفاصيل التاريخ الهندي من بعد الاستقلال عن بريطانيا. أظن أن هناك ترجمة عربية صدرت حديثا، أتمنى أن تكون أمينة لجمال وذكاء النص الأصلي.
أنصح بها.
أنصح بها.
January 24, 2024
Über diesen außergewöhnlichen Roman kann man eigentlich schwer etwas in Kurzform erzählen. Eine Bilderwelt aus Indien, Zusammenspiel von Judentum, Christentum und Hindu-Nationalismus. Die Gewürzhändler-Dynastie Da Gama/Zogaiby, ihrem Aufstieg und ihrem Untergang durch einen angeheirateten Nachfahren des letzten Emirs von Granada, mit dem Beinamen Zagoiby. Moraes Zagoiby, der letzte der Familie ist der Erzähler dieser Geschichte über fast ein Jahrhundert.
May 28, 2023
“I found I could remember very little about the journey. Tied down in the dark, I had evidently lost all sense of direction and of the passage of time. What was this place? Who were these people? Were they truly police officers? Was I really accused of drug trafficking and now also under the suspicion of murder? Or had I slipped accidentally from one page, one book of life, to another? In my wretched disoriented state had my reading finger perhaps slipped from my own story onto this other outlandish incomprehensible text that had been lying, by chance, just beneath? Yes. Some such slippage had plainly occurred.�
Multi-generational family saga set in India and Spain that follows a family of Cochin spice traders, the Zogoiby-Da Gama family, from around 1900 to the 1990s. The Moor of the title is Moraes Zogoiby. The Moor’s Last Sigh is also the title of a painting that plays a key role in the narrative. It is densely written in Rushdie’s usual manic style. He is an amazing wordsmith. The storylines are never straight-forward. Rushdie regularly loops back and forth (and all around), taking detours that are interesting and occasionally puzzling. The storyline contains a mix of India’s history, the separation of India and Pakistan, and folklore mixed with magical realism. I always enjoy Rushdie’s writing style. It is erudite, clever, and multi-layered. It is not always the easiest read, but well worth the effort.
Multi-generational family saga set in India and Spain that follows a family of Cochin spice traders, the Zogoiby-Da Gama family, from around 1900 to the 1990s. The Moor of the title is Moraes Zogoiby. The Moor’s Last Sigh is also the title of a painting that plays a key role in the narrative. It is densely written in Rushdie’s usual manic style. He is an amazing wordsmith. The storylines are never straight-forward. Rushdie regularly loops back and forth (and all around), taking detours that are interesting and occasionally puzzling. The storyline contains a mix of India’s history, the separation of India and Pakistan, and folklore mixed with magical realism. I always enjoy Rushdie’s writing style. It is erudite, clever, and multi-layered. It is not always the easiest read, but well worth the effort.
October 5, 2009
I almost stopped reading this a number of times, but I have a thing about finishing books. Salman Rushdie is one wordy motherfucker, the opposite of what I tend to enjoy. He's all for the word play, the linguistic jokes, the rhyming slang and colorful Indian colloquialisms, which are cute for a while but wear thin. His narrative is baroque, dripping with dramatic asides and rhetorical questions to the reader, teasing hooks, and a number of other devices I don't enjoy.
Still, I am interested in India, and there was enough about Indian culture and history to allow me to finish it out. I read a good introduction by him to an Anglea Carter book that was more restrained and concise. But are all his full-length books like _Moor_? If so, I'm going to pass on the Salman.
Still, I am interested in India, and there was enough about Indian culture and history to allow me to finish it out. I read a good introduction by him to an Anglea Carter book that was more restrained and concise. But are all his full-length books like _Moor_? If so, I'm going to pass on the Salman.
February 3, 2017
Mislim da je kraj malo zbrzan, sto je totalno nevazno, samo mi je malo umanjilo uzivanje. Ovo epsko putovanje kroz meni totalno nepoznatu kulturu itekako zasluzuje max. ocenu.
Jedva cekam da se ponovo druzim sa Rusdijem!
Jedva cekam da se ponovo druzim sa Rusdijem!
October 17, 2015
The Moor’s Last Sigh is a colorful, hard-hitting excursion into India. Squeezed into a paperback, it spans nearly a century, and through the tumultuous history of the Zogoibys as they enlarge their pepper trade in Cochin (wasn’t it with spices, the ‘hot� pepper that it all started?) to a national scale diversification of all kinds of ‘spices� of life, cruising through the intense political scenes of Independence movement to newly-acquired freedom to communal bloodshed to Indira Gandhi-led Emergency to the proliferation of the Mumbai Underworld Mafia in the 1980s and the 1990s with a parallel Upperworld Political communal Mafia, Rushdie, the master puppeteer creates a show where the Zogoibys, as Kalliope rightly points out, are the puppets of Mother India, the various myths that Mother India is, the various false myths Mother India is, and also the children of that passionately loving, passionately cruel Mother that are entranced and entrapped, approaching their doom with double the speed they are supposed to travel, and all by their own terrified consent.
Like the Moor’s tale, my own take on the tale is anything but coherent, scattered like Moor’s loose pages all over the place, messy and chaotic. Allegorical to Mother India. Full of magical-realism, it is a realism that seems magical to the onlookers, a tragi-comedy, a tragedy to the characters, a farce to the readers, a drudge to the living. Written in 1995, this is Rushdie’s first novel after The Satanic Verses, that forced an author underground because he chose to speakofy his mind not in hush-hush barely-decipherable ambiguous impotent tones but in an in-your-face to-hell-with-you don’t-askofy-if-you-don’t-want-the-bleddy-truth profane potent portent loudspeaker style. It was not Moor who was exiled by his Mother Aurora da-Gama Zogoiby, but the Unlucky (Zogoiby in Arabic) Rushdie, the Indian bastard (or as Rushdie-Moor likes it, baas stink, turd no translation needed) of a non-Indian community who was disowned and thrown out by Mother India, hurtling towards an imminent death perhaps at double the speed of his biological life-span, cursed by another Mother-Rumpelstiltskin who wanted him all for herself.
The Moor’s tale, then, is not just an allegory to Modern Mother India, or to her unfortunate children, but also particularly to one special crippled child Rushdie himself, betrayed by his mother, his housekeeper Miss Jaya He (see the point? It is a phrase in the National Anthem, loosely meaning Victory/Hail! -to who-else-but-Mom-India?), by his only lover artist Uma Sarasvati (Two Indian Goddesses in one � Uma, the wife of Shiv-who-destroys Sarasvati, the incarnation of knowledge, therefore, the brilliant girl who destroyed Moor), and lastly, by his own Muse Vasco Miranda (an allusion to another profane blasphemous Indian artist M.F. Hussain, exiled by our Mom?) for whom Moor’s mother Aurora was once his own Muse.
Where to start? After all this long dithering, I haven’t startofied my review yet. When Moor’s own tale is all over the place, how do I know where to begin? When the tale itself is a pastiche, a random sticking of images and histories that has its own method to madness, when there is no clear beginning but only a vertigo where anything can come first, beware, O Readers, I too will stick-o-fy my point wherever I wish, like Moor stickofies one page of his tale to a tree and the other to a wall and a third to a well until they’re all over Benengeli, and don’t point-o-fy your fingers at me if you don’t like my jabberings lest I Jaw-Jaw at you like that now-stuffed dog.
Ah, but it all began with the spicy “spices� trade, didn’t it? The Portuguese had the hots for all our hot stuff and came here crossing half the world for a pinch of pepper. And then the Jews, the exiles from their own Mothers came sailing and sat down in Cochin, becoming the Cochin Jews, and also came all the Portuguese Christians, all of them with their hidden mysteries that led them here, and went into the
pepper trade. So here we come to the Portuguese Epifania and Francisco da Gama in the early 1900s with their children -Aires who married Carmen-Aunt Sahara, the flat barren desert who was never touched by her homo husband and so never reaped the fortune that lay between her legs, a legal heir, and Camoens, who married Belle who made both boobies and babies with her hubby to bring forth Mother Aurora who would marry a Cochin Jew who�. But, like Moor, I’m getting ahead of my tale.
While we witness the interesting, hilarious events of the da-Gama family as Belle wages war against the dominating matriarch epiphany Epifania, what we witness in the in-house separation (Belle, Camoens,
Francisco going anti-British-Simon-go-back, Epifania-Aires-Carmen going The-Brits-gave-us-what-all-we-have)is a microcosm of an India torn into two factions � an elite pro-British bunch, especially Christians/Portuguese afraid of giving up their pretty Anglican ways simultaneously rightly fearing Indians in charge of India, and an optimistic pro-Independence pro-equality, softly flirtatiously Marxist, heavily nationalistic euphoric duds bunch rallying under the suave charm of the English-pruned Nehru and the rustic-once-upon a-time-Angrezi-imitator-now-desi-by-choice little naked man Gandhi in-a-loin-cloth.
The ballistic warfare in the da-Gama family that ends with Belle taking charge of the house and the business when national chaos descends and Aires and Camoens are dumped into jail for 15 years signals the victory of the INC, the Nehru-led Congress party that would replace the British in 1947. But as everyone knows, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru screwed up the nation that was put in his hands, that dilettante child of Macaulay who finally produced his dream Minuteman, Indians in blood and color, but English in choices and opinions, daydreaming of progress as the country burned and got beaten up in front of his closed sleeping dreaming eyes.
For all his failures, I now think, Rushdie has been really kind to him, only mocking him with semi-seriousness (Aires, out of contempt, names his bulldog Jawaharlal Jaw-Jaw to annoy the pro-Nehru family-members):
While the World Wars rage and the Independence movement gains momentum, Aurora grows up mother-less, not so much as motherless, as her Mummy Belle hunts business deals during the day and tigers to feed upon at night, with Camoens tucked away in jail. And when Belle dies after Camoens is released, Aurora, the 13-year old kid unleashes her week-long mourning in isolation by maddeningly painting her room, pouring forth vivid confusing images of the family yarn and weaving them onto a carpet of colors. At 15, she chooses the quiet Arab-Jew clerk Abraham Zogoiby, as old as her father as her lover, and while her father dies, she moves in with him, because she cannot marry him. In the book, this is quite an interesting, roaring episode, a great commentary on religious/cultural clashes, of standing up to one’s family for one’s right to love, of the great complicated affair a family is within the even more complicated nuances of age-old cultural rivalries, building upon Romeo and Juliet but our lovers are no Romeo or Juliet � if they cannot marry, they will not. But they will love. Not in their sacred hearts, but in their scandalous bodies. Not from their respective captive homes, but in the freedom of their house.
Let them make their own yarn. But welcome back to India. It’s an independent country now. Aurora has taken V. Miranda the artist under her wing and at the dinner table, newly-found freedom is being celebrated while Hindus and Muslims massacre each other in Kashmir. Miranda lashes out at the self-deceived foolery around him:
Why is Kashmir the point of contention between India and Pakistan, and not any other state, when there were and are so many other probable candidates too? It is because immediately after Independence when many states/kingdoms (Junagadh, Hyderabad, Kashmir...) wanted to be independent nations, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was appointed to unite them under India by hook or crook. Patel succeeded, but Nehru intervened. Instead of Sardar, Nehru wanted to be the one to convince Kashmir’s Hindu king, who ruled the state’s majority population of Muslims, to join India. Bleddy Reason: Nehru was a Kashmiri Pandit. He was so much in love with his state, the dudhead wanted the glory of salvaging his darling state and he messed it up with his ineptitude. And Hindus and Muslims, torn between India and Pakistan and the chance of becoming an independent entity, slaughtered each other, sending the nation into yet another bout of shock, paranoia, enmity and accusations. The riots haven’t yet ended � they have become more frequent, all over the country. And Vasco was right. Gods are useless. Money speaks. Bleddy money speaks and bleddy gods listen.
It was not an inebriated Miranda’s senseless tirade � it was a spectacular summing up of how India was doomed from the very start, and would pay heavily for the foundation it had achieved its Independence on. And the consequences, in Moor’s words, as we jump momentarily to the end of the novel which alludes to the turning points in India’s Communal history (the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992 by BJP-RSS-VHP political right-wing Hindu party, and the subsequent terror attacks by Muslim extremists in Mumbai particularly and riots all over the twin countries) are:
But warnings were given even earlier, when Aurora wasn’t even born, by Camoens, referring to the hymn beloved to Gandhi, that says Ram/Ishwar and Allah are one, the Hindu and Islamic gods are but different names for one god, predicting the events of 1992 when the Mosque was partially demolished on the argument that Lord Ram was born there 5000 years ago, where the 400 years old mosque now stood:
But back to old India, to the two Mothers that captured the imagination of real India, while Aurora takes hold of Moor and Moor’s life, in the middle of the 20th century. From Cochin, the story swiftly moves to Bombay as the Zogoiby family relocates there and the nation transitions from political babysteps to an enfant terrible, a socio-political menace in the dexterous, able hands of Rushdie’s flawlessly executed introduction � Aurora’s rebellious high-parapet frenzy blasphemous scandalizing dance in contempt of Maharashtra’s beloved Hindu festival, Ganesh Chaturthi, the celebration of the Elephant-headed god first used as a pretext for banned large-scale meetings by the freedom-fighter Lokmanya Tilak who fanned the flames of armed resistance against British Raj, then recently appropriated by the notorious political hard-liner party Shiv Sena to drive out poor non-Marathi migrant workers from the state, turning an innocent festival into the hotbed of religious frenzy and fanaticism and filthy opportunistic politics, where the two make unlikely but highly-compatible bedfellows.
Rushdie takes a dig at Shiv Sena founder, the cartoonist-turned-militant Bal Thackeray, mocking his ugliness by adding a nickname “Mainduck� (Frog in Hindi) to his fictitious name Raman Fielding, blatantly accusing his party of all the dirty politics they have played, transitioning from champions of Marathi culture and people to moral policing (read: lathi-charging young couples, married or unmarried, for holding hands in public on Valentine’s Day and beating the hell out of them if they become a bit cozy on other days too) to aligning with BJP-RSS-VHP and inciting communal hatred.
And coming to Bombay, (ooops! Mumbai now, unless you want Shiv Sena pulping you for the indiscretion) how can we forget our silver screen Mother now, Mother India, the quintessential tale of the Indian mother, Indian bride, Indian wife, Indianwoman (she doesn’t exist on her own, does she?), the quintessential tale of rural agricultural India, the quintessential tale of common man which the gripped the country’s imagination, with its spectacular pair of mother (played by Nargis) and rebellious son Birju (played by Sunil Dutt) who married soon in real life. The movie becomes a source of discussion for India, a metaphor for the imagined India that was so far removed from metropolitan India and yet survived through popular myth, through Metanarratives, as the essence of India. Juxtaposing the rural movie with the metro city, the fictional mother-son with real-life lovers, Aurora says, as Nargis and Sunil Dutt visit her home:
And now, Rushdie’s own careful comment on the movie, which can be seen both in and out of context of the novel:
And what about the other Mother India, the one that haunted real-life India? Indira Gandhi, daughter of Nehru, first female PM of India, the one who boldly broke the sanctions on India and went ahead to test India’s first nuclear device in Pokhran, and in 1975 she imposed the Emergency when it became clear that she would be removed from her post. Like Aurora, she is the heroine and the antiheroine, the mother and the anti-mother figure of India’s story. While the poor and the honest beg and die, or are executed, the rich and the corrupt oil each other and reap its dirty wealth. Abraham Zogoiby enters the Underworld negotiations and his business grows exponentially, while Aurora’s stars as the beloved Indian artist rise and sink and rise.
With Uma Sarasvati’s machinations that drive mother-and-son apart, Moor’s foray into Mainduck’s clan, his prodigal return to his father who then has no use for him and discards him for the second time, it is India we see, everywhere, everywhere. This isn’t a story about the Moor or the Zogoibys at all. It is Rushdie’s impeccable skills that make you think that it is about the characters caught up in a particularly eventful century.
Even though it is about India, the surface story never flags; the two are so closely intertwined together that they cannot be told without either going missing. Each one tells the other’s tale. And so, when the characters aren’t likeable enough, or deep enough, it is because they aren’t meant to be. Generalizations are never finely woven -like a summary, they have to span over a large slice of time and eschew much of finesse. And yet, the characters are deep enough, nuanced enough to keep the reader gripped in the surface story and not just let him/her slip into the metaphorical story of India.
And like the titular painting ‘The moor’s last sigh�, the final act of forgiveness that Aurora bestows upon her son Moor -India, and the Moor’s tale too is a palimpsest, a painting upon a painting, a
superimposition of one tale over the other. Two tales that have merged into one, even though they are different.
Why this deeper story masquerading so convincingly as the surface story, or vice-versa? Because, my dears, this is what India is. A visual deception, a deception nuanced, fine enough to send the unwary casual stroller on the wrong path. The Upperworld and the Underworld don’t just co-exist as allegories, they are the same story itself. They are not two sides of the same coin. It is not you-or-me, it is you-and-me. Their threads are so finely enmeshed that to destroy one is to destroy the other too. And so, readers, is Rushdie’s tale. The Zogoibys and India don’t just co-exist. The Zogoibys are not a metaphor for India, a microcosm, a summary of India, a representative of the land. It is not India simplified, India-for-Dummies guidebook. They and India are different, but part of the same story.
2nd part of the review - /review/show...
Like the Moor’s tale, my own take on the tale is anything but coherent, scattered like Moor’s loose pages all over the place, messy and chaotic. Allegorical to Mother India. Full of magical-realism, it is a realism that seems magical to the onlookers, a tragi-comedy, a tragedy to the characters, a farce to the readers, a drudge to the living. Written in 1995, this is Rushdie’s first novel after The Satanic Verses, that forced an author underground because he chose to speakofy his mind not in hush-hush barely-decipherable ambiguous impotent tones but in an in-your-face to-hell-with-you don’t-askofy-if-you-don’t-want-the-bleddy-truth profane potent portent loudspeaker style. It was not Moor who was exiled by his Mother Aurora da-Gama Zogoiby, but the Unlucky (Zogoiby in Arabic) Rushdie, the Indian bastard (or as Rushdie-Moor likes it, baas stink, turd no translation needed) of a non-Indian community who was disowned and thrown out by Mother India, hurtling towards an imminent death perhaps at double the speed of his biological life-span, cursed by another Mother-Rumpelstiltskin who wanted him all for herself.
The Moor’s tale, then, is not just an allegory to Modern Mother India, or to her unfortunate children, but also particularly to one special crippled child Rushdie himself, betrayed by his mother, his housekeeper Miss Jaya He (see the point? It is a phrase in the National Anthem, loosely meaning Victory/Hail! -to who-else-but-Mom-India?), by his only lover artist Uma Sarasvati (Two Indian Goddesses in one � Uma, the wife of Shiv-who-destroys Sarasvati, the incarnation of knowledge, therefore, the brilliant girl who destroyed Moor), and lastly, by his own Muse Vasco Miranda (an allusion to another profane blasphemous Indian artist M.F. Hussain, exiled by our Mom?) for whom Moor’s mother Aurora was once his own Muse.
Where to start? After all this long dithering, I haven’t startofied my review yet. When Moor’s own tale is all over the place, how do I know where to begin? When the tale itself is a pastiche, a random sticking of images and histories that has its own method to madness, when there is no clear beginning but only a vertigo where anything can come first, beware, O Readers, I too will stick-o-fy my point wherever I wish, like Moor stickofies one page of his tale to a tree and the other to a wall and a third to a well until they’re all over Benengeli, and don’t point-o-fy your fingers at me if you don’t like my jabberings lest I Jaw-Jaw at you like that now-stuffed dog.
Ah, but it all began with the spicy “spices� trade, didn’t it? The Portuguese had the hots for all our hot stuff and came here crossing half the world for a pinch of pepper. And then the Jews, the exiles from their own Mothers came sailing and sat down in Cochin, becoming the Cochin Jews, and also came all the Portuguese Christians, all of them with their hidden mysteries that led them here, and went into the
pepper trade. So here we come to the Portuguese Epifania and Francisco da Gama in the early 1900s with their children -Aires who married Carmen-Aunt Sahara, the flat barren desert who was never touched by her homo husband and so never reaped the fortune that lay between her legs, a legal heir, and Camoens, who married Belle who made both boobies and babies with her hubby to bring forth Mother Aurora who would marry a Cochin Jew who�. But, like Moor, I’m getting ahead of my tale.
While we witness the interesting, hilarious events of the da-Gama family as Belle wages war against the dominating matriarch epiphany Epifania, what we witness in the in-house separation (Belle, Camoens,
Francisco going anti-British-Simon-go-back, Epifania-Aires-Carmen going The-Brits-gave-us-what-all-we-have)is a microcosm of an India torn into two factions � an elite pro-British bunch, especially Christians/Portuguese afraid of giving up their pretty Anglican ways simultaneously rightly fearing Indians in charge of India, and an optimistic pro-Independence pro-equality, softly flirtatiously Marxist, heavily nationalistic euphoric duds bunch rallying under the suave charm of the English-pruned Nehru and the rustic-once-upon a-time-Angrezi-imitator-now-desi-by-choice little naked man Gandhi in-a-loin-cloth.
The ballistic warfare in the da-Gama family that ends with Belle taking charge of the house and the business when national chaos descends and Aires and Camoens are dumped into jail for 15 years signals the victory of the INC, the Nehru-led Congress party that would replace the British in 1947. But as everyone knows, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru screwed up the nation that was put in his hands, that dilettante child of Macaulay who finally produced his dream Minuteman, Indians in blood and color, but English in choices and opinions, daydreaming of progress as the country burned and got beaten up in front of his closed sleeping dreaming eyes.
For all his failures, I now think, Rushdie has been really kind to him, only mocking him with semi-seriousness (Aires, out of contempt, names his bulldog Jawaharlal Jaw-Jaw to annoy the pro-Nehru family-members):
Shut up, Jaw-Jaw, you all-bark-no-bite-mutt�
Like Jaw-Jaw Jawaharlal, they made plenty of noise but didn’t draw much blood.
Panditji, Congress-tho is always chickening out in the face of radical acts. No soft options will be takeofied round here.
Once, indeed, there were giants on our stage; but at the fag-end of an age, Madam History must make do with what she can get. Jawaharlal, in these latter days, was just the name of a stuffed dog.(At this point in the story, the dog is dead and is stuffed by Aires to keep him “alive�, a brilliant metaphor by Rushdie.
While the World Wars rage and the Independence movement gains momentum, Aurora grows up mother-less, not so much as motherless, as her Mummy Belle hunts business deals during the day and tigers to feed upon at night, with Camoens tucked away in jail. And when Belle dies after Camoens is released, Aurora, the 13-year old kid unleashes her week-long mourning in isolation by maddeningly painting her room, pouring forth vivid confusing images of the family yarn and weaving them onto a carpet of colors. At 15, she chooses the quiet Arab-Jew clerk Abraham Zogoiby, as old as her father as her lover, and while her father dies, she moves in with him, because she cannot marry him. In the book, this is quite an interesting, roaring episode, a great commentary on religious/cultural clashes, of standing up to one’s family for one’s right to love, of the great complicated affair a family is within the even more complicated nuances of age-old cultural rivalries, building upon Romeo and Juliet but our lovers are no Romeo or Juliet � if they cannot marry, they will not. But they will love. Not in their sacred hearts, but in their scandalous bodies. Not from their respective captive homes, but in the freedom of their house.
Let them make their own yarn. But welcome back to India. It’s an independent country now. Aurora has taken V. Miranda the artist under her wing and at the dinner table, newly-found freedom is being celebrated while Hindus and Muslims massacre each other in Kashmir. Miranda lashes out at the self-deceived foolery around him:
’Useless fucking art-johnny clever-dicks,� he jeered. ‘Circular sexualist India my foot. No. Bleddy tongue-twister came out wrong. Secular socialist. That’s it. Bleddy bunk. Panditji sold you that stuff like a cheap watch salesman and you all bought one and now you wonder why it doesn’t work. Bleddy Congress party full of bleddy fake Rolex Salesman. You think India’ll just roll over, all those bloodthirsty bloodsoaked gods’ll just roll over and die […]
[…]And I’ll tell you something, Mr. Big Businessman Abie, let me give you a tip. Only one power in this damn country is strong enough to stand up against those gods and it isn’t blanket blank sockular specialism. It isn’t blanket blank Pandit Nehru and his blanket blank protection-of-minorities Congress watch-wallahs. You know what it is? I’ll tell you what it is. Corruption. You get me? Bribery […]
[…]One more thing, piece of good advice for you all. Get on the boats with the British! Just get on the bleddy boats and buggeroff. This place has no use for you. It’ll beat you and eat you. Get out! Get out
while the getting’s good.
Why is Kashmir the point of contention between India and Pakistan, and not any other state, when there were and are so many other probable candidates too? It is because immediately after Independence when many states/kingdoms (Junagadh, Hyderabad, Kashmir...) wanted to be independent nations, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was appointed to unite them under India by hook or crook. Patel succeeded, but Nehru intervened. Instead of Sardar, Nehru wanted to be the one to convince Kashmir’s Hindu king, who ruled the state’s majority population of Muslims, to join India. Bleddy Reason: Nehru was a Kashmiri Pandit. He was so much in love with his state, the dudhead wanted the glory of salvaging his darling state and he messed it up with his ineptitude. And Hindus and Muslims, torn between India and Pakistan and the chance of becoming an independent entity, slaughtered each other, sending the nation into yet another bout of shock, paranoia, enmity and accusations. The riots haven’t yet ended � they have become more frequent, all over the country. And Vasco was right. Gods are useless. Money speaks. Bleddy money speaks and bleddy gods listen.
It was not an inebriated Miranda’s senseless tirade � it was a spectacular summing up of how India was doomed from the very start, and would pay heavily for the foundation it had achieved its Independence on. And the consequences, in Moor’s words, as we jump momentarily to the end of the novel which alludes to the turning points in India’s Communal history (the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in December 1992 by BJP-RSS-VHP political right-wing Hindu party, and the subsequent terror attacks by Muslim extremists in Mumbai particularly and riots all over the twin countries) are:
Violence was violence, murder was murder, two wrongs did not make one right: these are truths of which I was fully cognizant. Also: by sinking to your adversary’s level you lose the high ground. In the days after the destruction of the Babri Masjid, ‘justly enraged Muslims�/‘fanatical killers� smashed up Hindu temples, and killed Hindus, across India and Pakistan as well. There comes a point in the unfurling of communal violence in which it becomes irrelevant to ask, ‘Who started it?� The lethal conjugations of death part company with any possibility of justification, let alone justice. They surge among us, left and right, Hindu and Muslim, knife and pistol, killing, burning, looting, and raising into the smoky air their clenched and bloody fists. Both their houses are damned by their deeds; both sides sacrifice the right to any shred of virtue; they are each other’s plagues.
But warnings were given even earlier, when Aurora wasn’t even born, by Camoens, referring to the hymn beloved to Gandhi, that says Ram/Ishwar and Allah are one, the Hindu and Islamic gods are but different names for one god, predicting the events of 1992 when the Mosque was partially demolished on the argument that Lord Ram was born there 5000 years ago, where the 400 years old mosque now stood:
And they say Ishwar and Allah is your name but they don’t mean it, they mean only Ram himself, king of the Raghu clan, purifier of sinners along with Sita. In the end I am afraid […] people like us will have to lock our doors and there will come a Battering Ram.�
But back to old India, to the two Mothers that captured the imagination of real India, while Aurora takes hold of Moor and Moor’s life, in the middle of the 20th century. From Cochin, the story swiftly moves to Bombay as the Zogoiby family relocates there and the nation transitions from political babysteps to an enfant terrible, a socio-political menace in the dexterous, able hands of Rushdie’s flawlessly executed introduction � Aurora’s rebellious high-parapet frenzy blasphemous scandalizing dance in contempt of Maharashtra’s beloved Hindu festival, Ganesh Chaturthi, the celebration of the Elephant-headed god first used as a pretext for banned large-scale meetings by the freedom-fighter Lokmanya Tilak who fanned the flames of armed resistance against British Raj, then recently appropriated by the notorious political hard-liner party Shiv Sena to drive out poor non-Marathi migrant workers from the state, turning an innocent festival into the hotbed of religious frenzy and fanaticism and filthy opportunistic politics, where the two make unlikely but highly-compatible bedfellows.
Rushdie takes a dig at Shiv Sena founder, the cartoonist-turned-militant Bal Thackeray, mocking his ugliness by adding a nickname “Mainduck� (Frog in Hindi) to his fictitious name Raman Fielding, blatantly accusing his party of all the dirty politics they have played, transitioning from champions of Marathi culture and people to moral policing (read: lathi-charging young couples, married or unmarried, for holding hands in public on Valentine’s Day and beating the hell out of them if they become a bit cozy on other days too) to aligning with BJP-RSS-VHP and inciting communal hatred.
And coming to Bombay, (ooops! Mumbai now, unless you want Shiv Sena pulping you for the indiscretion) how can we forget our silver screen Mother now, Mother India, the quintessential tale of the Indian mother, Indian bride, Indian wife, Indian
‘The first time I saw that picture�, she (Aurora) confided to the famous movie star (Nargis) on the high terrace at Elephanta, ‘I took one look at your Bad Son, Birju, and I thought, O boy, what a handsome guy � too much sizzle, too much chilli, bring water. He may be a thief and a bounder, but that is some A-class loverboy goods. And now look � you have gone and marry-o‘ed him! What sexy lives you movie people leadofy: to marry your own son, I swear, wowie.�
‘Even in the picture, but,� Aurora went relentlessly on, ‘I knew right off that bad Birju had the hots for his gorgeous ma.�
And now, Rushdie’s own careful comment on the movie, which can be seen both in and out of context of the novel:
In Mother India, a piece of Hindu myth-making directed by a Muslim socialist, Mehboob Khan, the Indian peasant woman is idealized as bride, mother and producer of sons; as long-suffering, stoical, loving, redemptive, and conservatively wedded to the maintenance of the status-quo. But for Bad Birju, cast out from his mother’s love, she becomes, as one critic has mentioned, ‘that image of an aggressive, treacherous, annihilating mother who haunts the fantasy life of Indian males.�
And what about the other Mother India, the one that haunted real-life India? Indira Gandhi, daughter of Nehru, first female PM of India, the one who boldly broke the sanctions on India and went ahead to test India’s first nuclear device in Pokhran, and in 1975 she imposed the Emergency when it became clear that she would be removed from her post. Like Aurora, she is the heroine and the antiheroine, the mother and the anti-mother figure of India’s story. While the poor and the honest beg and die, or are executed, the rich and the corrupt oil each other and reap its dirty wealth. Abraham Zogoiby enters the Underworld negotiations and his business grows exponentially, while Aurora’s stars as the beloved Indian artist rise and sink and rise.
With Uma Sarasvati’s machinations that drive mother-and-son apart, Moor’s foray into Mainduck’s clan, his prodigal return to his father who then has no use for him and discards him for the second time, it is India we see, everywhere, everywhere. This isn’t a story about the Moor or the Zogoibys at all. It is Rushdie’s impeccable skills that make you think that it is about the characters caught up in a particularly eventful century.
Even though it is about India, the surface story never flags; the two are so closely intertwined together that they cannot be told without either going missing. Each one tells the other’s tale. And so, when the characters aren’t likeable enough, or deep enough, it is because they aren’t meant to be. Generalizations are never finely woven -like a summary, they have to span over a large slice of time and eschew much of finesse. And yet, the characters are deep enough, nuanced enough to keep the reader gripped in the surface story and not just let him/her slip into the metaphorical story of India.
And like the titular painting ‘The moor’s last sigh�, the final act of forgiveness that Aurora bestows upon her son Moor -India, and the Moor’s tale too is a palimpsest, a painting upon a painting, a
superimposition of one tale over the other. Two tales that have merged into one, even though they are different.
Why this deeper story masquerading so convincingly as the surface story, or vice-versa? Because, my dears, this is what India is. A visual deception, a deception nuanced, fine enough to send the unwary casual stroller on the wrong path. The Upperworld and the Underworld don’t just co-exist as allegories, they are the same story itself. They are not two sides of the same coin. It is not you-or-me, it is you-and-me. Their threads are so finely enmeshed that to destroy one is to destroy the other too. And so, readers, is Rushdie’s tale. The Zogoibys and India don’t just co-exist. The Zogoibys are not a metaphor for India, a microcosm, a summary of India, a representative of the land. It is not India simplified, India-for-Dummies guidebook. They and India are different, but part of the same story.
2nd part of the review - /review/show...
December 4, 2013
I found this book really hard to get into for a few reasons. I would read some and then put it down for a few days, then try to resume and be entirely confused about who was who because there are so many characters and relationships introduced at the beginning, it's very hard to keep track. Also, Rushdie's wordiness made it much harder to get into the storytelling. At first the story seemed confusing and meandering until I got all the characters and relationships figured out. The last half seemed to pick up a lot, but I almost put the book down before I got there (which I never do).
Once I got into it I found the characters and their relationships very intriguing. Plus the social and political commentary was woven fully and fairly seamlessly into the story and characters, which was really interesting. The concept of Moor aging twice as fast as anyone else also presents an unusual framework for the events that take place.
So I guess my advice on this one is don't stop and start read it, because you may find it harder to enjoy. This was my first Rushdie book, not sure if I'll read another anytime soon.
Once I got into it I found the characters and their relationships very intriguing. Plus the social and political commentary was woven fully and fairly seamlessly into the story and characters, which was really interesting. The concept of Moor aging twice as fast as anyone else also presents an unusual framework for the events that take place.
So I guess my advice on this one is don't stop and start read it, because you may find it harder to enjoy. This was my first Rushdie book, not sure if I'll read another anytime soon.
January 17, 2008
This is my favorite of Rushdie's. It combines the lyrical mysticism of Midnight's Children with the hard-nosed magical-realism of the "present-day" sections of The Satanic Verses. I found Midnight's Children to have an almost apocolyptic feeling about it, especially in the later chapters -- this is hardly a knock against it. But I feel like The Moor's Last Sigh, while it certainly comes to a climactic head much as Midnight's Children, does so in a way that you feel is, I suppose, more thematically complete. In this way, Midnight's Children might be subtitled, "The Amazing Adventures of Saleem Sinai in Post-Colonial India" whereas The Moor's Last Sigh requires no subtitle whatsoever.
December 1, 2016
This was a beautiful book about the end of Arab rule of Spain and has made me dream for years (unfulfilled as of yet :( to visit Alhambra in Andalusia. Full of melancholy and some eye-opening facts, it is one of Rushdie's finest efforts and a worthy read after Midnight's Children.
April 21, 2008
Honestly, I remember almost nothing about this book---something about a man who ages at twice the age that normal people are supposed to, something about his mother (who I found to be the most interesting character in the book--actually the women in this book leave the most enduring memories)--a spice plantation and fights about money.
This began my love affair with magic realism--which has since somehow curdled. At the time, I thought this is IT, this is what writing should be---but since then magic realism has become somewhat over-used---as a sort of crutch to make boring ideas interesting--similar to stream-of-conciousness rambling a generation earlier (oh yes, when it's good it's very good, but oh-so-often it is a cover for poor writing).
I'm not saying that Rushdie does this HERE however---as I recall this is a solid read, though by no means a point of entry to Rushdie's work (Midnight's Children would be a much better gateway in my opinion). I probably should read this again--but I just don't have the heart.
This began my love affair with magic realism--which has since somehow curdled. At the time, I thought this is IT, this is what writing should be---but since then magic realism has become somewhat over-used---as a sort of crutch to make boring ideas interesting--similar to stream-of-conciousness rambling a generation earlier (oh yes, when it's good it's very good, but oh-so-often it is a cover for poor writing).
I'm not saying that Rushdie does this HERE however---as I recall this is a solid read, though by no means a point of entry to Rushdie's work (Midnight's Children would be a much better gateway in my opinion). I probably should read this again--but I just don't have the heart.
December 24, 2013
The Moor’s Last Sigh was almost exactly what I expected it to be: a sprawling family drama written with vibrancy and pulsing with layers of foreign mysticism. However, something was missing. Yes, the characters were larger than life and uniquely distinct. Yes, there were magical undercurrents inhabiting almost every nook. Yes, there was exposure to culture in an in your face kind of way that effectively transplanted you. But somehow, despite all the trimmings and embellishments for greatness, something just wasn't right� and I suspect it had all to do with the plot.
I was bored too many times with this one. Bored not for lack of activity, but bored because the activity that was going on took on a plodding and methodical approach. The Moor begins his narration hinting at a personal trauma that invades his life, and the reader is left on anticipatory pins and needles as one awaits this in the lion’s den moment for the Moor. But before we get to that tragedy, we are taken on a journey into the detailed history of the day to day of his family’s ancestors, starting with a great grandmother and several emasculated uncles, then working its way down the genealogical tree to the Moor’s heralded birth. Usually I am on board for these kinds of narratives, for in families of a kooky caliber such as this, one is exposed to all manner of voodoo and intrigue, which always leads to a good read. However, I could not help but feel that in the process of describing everyone but himself, that the narrator felt more like a casual observer than an actual partaker for most of the novel. Though I was very into learning how this parent meant that parent, or how that relative beat up that relative, I still found myself wishing the Moor’s story would just start happening sooner.
For even though the last third of the novel does focus on him, there were still distractions that made even his ascent into manhood come across with a whimper. The focus felt always elsewhere, either on the politics of India as told by a gossip columnist, or on the unpredictable happenings of his steel-blooded and unlikable mother, Aurora. Once again not bad distractions should you need one, but I felt that the story of the Moor, who enters the world deformed of hand and with a form of progeria that laces him immediately with distinction and magic, was strong enough to stand on its own without the superfluous disturbances that took away from me really identifying with the Moor like I should have.
I feel ultimately unsure of why this one somewhat failed, because even mentioning the above seems like an exaggerated and nitpicky heresy of sorts. The writing at times was beautiful, as one would expect from Rushdie, but at times the writing also felt like muck that I had to maneuver through in order to get to the end. I hope over the course of my life to read more Rushdie, but somehow this one makes me want to hold off before I enter that desert of an experience again. Pound for pound, this was a well written book by a well-known author, but somehow it did not leave a taste in my mouth that I am yearning to experience again.
I was bored too many times with this one. Bored not for lack of activity, but bored because the activity that was going on took on a plodding and methodical approach. The Moor begins his narration hinting at a personal trauma that invades his life, and the reader is left on anticipatory pins and needles as one awaits this in the lion’s den moment for the Moor. But before we get to that tragedy, we are taken on a journey into the detailed history of the day to day of his family’s ancestors, starting with a great grandmother and several emasculated uncles, then working its way down the genealogical tree to the Moor’s heralded birth. Usually I am on board for these kinds of narratives, for in families of a kooky caliber such as this, one is exposed to all manner of voodoo and intrigue, which always leads to a good read. However, I could not help but feel that in the process of describing everyone but himself, that the narrator felt more like a casual observer than an actual partaker for most of the novel. Though I was very into learning how this parent meant that parent, or how that relative beat up that relative, I still found myself wishing the Moor’s story would just start happening sooner.
For even though the last third of the novel does focus on him, there were still distractions that made even his ascent into manhood come across with a whimper. The focus felt always elsewhere, either on the politics of India as told by a gossip columnist, or on the unpredictable happenings of his steel-blooded and unlikable mother, Aurora. Once again not bad distractions should you need one, but I felt that the story of the Moor, who enters the world deformed of hand and with a form of progeria that laces him immediately with distinction and magic, was strong enough to stand on its own without the superfluous disturbances that took away from me really identifying with the Moor like I should have.
I feel ultimately unsure of why this one somewhat failed, because even mentioning the above seems like an exaggerated and nitpicky heresy of sorts. The writing at times was beautiful, as one would expect from Rushdie, but at times the writing also felt like muck that I had to maneuver through in order to get to the end. I hope over the course of my life to read more Rushdie, but somehow this one makes me want to hold off before I enter that desert of an experience again. Pound for pound, this was a well written book by a well-known author, but somehow it did not leave a taste in my mouth that I am yearning to experience again.
May 7, 2024
Saga familiare a dir poco caotica!
Molti personaggi piuttosto particolari, donne estremamente forti e caparbie e il nostro Moro a raccontare la storia della sua vita e della sua famiglia.
È un bel romanzo, ma in tutta onestà in parecchi punti ho perso un po' il filo e l'ho trovato un po' forzato in alcune parti .
Se l'amore non è tutto, allora è nulla.
Non c'è limite alla malvagità, non c'è frontiera che qualcuno abbia scoperto. Qualunque sia l'eccesso di oggi, domani sarà peggio.
Accetta il tuo destino» disse. «Godi di ciò che ti dà sofferenza. Voltati e corri con tutta l'anima verso ciò che fuggiresti. Solo diventando la tua disgrazia la trascenderai.
<<<È difficile perdonare la vita per la forza con cui le grandi macchine di "ciò che è� si avventano sulle anime di "quelli che sono">>> disse con una certa noncuranza dopo che ci fummo seduti al tavolo di un caffè riparato da un ombrellone davanti a due forti caffè neri e a due bicchieri di Fundador. «Come perdonare il mondo per la sua bellezza, che ne maschera semplicemente la bruttura; per la sua mitezza, che ne nasconde semplicemente la crudeltà; per la sua illusione di continuare, senza pause, come la notte segue il giorno, per così dire?...
Mentre in realtà la vita è una serie di brutali spaccature, che ci piombano sul capo indifeso come i colpi d'accetta di un boscaiolo.>>
Molti personaggi piuttosto particolari, donne estremamente forti e caparbie e il nostro Moro a raccontare la storia della sua vita e della sua famiglia.
È un bel romanzo, ma in tutta onestà in parecchi punti ho perso un po' il filo e l'ho trovato un po' forzato in alcune parti .
Se l'amore non è tutto, allora è nulla.
Non c'è limite alla malvagità, non c'è frontiera che qualcuno abbia scoperto. Qualunque sia l'eccesso di oggi, domani sarà peggio.
Accetta il tuo destino» disse. «Godi di ciò che ti dà sofferenza. Voltati e corri con tutta l'anima verso ciò che fuggiresti. Solo diventando la tua disgrazia la trascenderai.
<<<È difficile perdonare la vita per la forza con cui le grandi macchine di "ciò che è� si avventano sulle anime di "quelli che sono">>> disse con una certa noncuranza dopo che ci fummo seduti al tavolo di un caffè riparato da un ombrellone davanti a due forti caffè neri e a due bicchieri di Fundador. «Come perdonare il mondo per la sua bellezza, che ne maschera semplicemente la bruttura; per la sua mitezza, che ne nasconde semplicemente la crudeltà; per la sua illusione di continuare, senza pause, come la notte segue il giorno, per così dire?...
Mentre in realtà la vita è una serie di brutali spaccature, che ci piombano sul capo indifeso come i colpi d'accetta di un boscaiolo.>>
April 17, 2018
I read this, as I do, while walking the dogs in the morning and afternoon, but when I sat down with it in the holidays for a serious reading session, I thought, what the hell am I wasting my time on this crap for. It's all hyperbole and no depth. No surprise when I looked up his birth chart and saw he is a double Gemini. Like a stone skipping over the water Rushdie describes his characters and tells his story skipping from one thing to the next. Everything and everyone is the most beautiful, the ugliest, the wickedest, kindest, most gullible, largest, etc etc etc. It's like a comic book set in India, without the pictures. I know there is a world of people who love this sort of frippery but it ain't for me.
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