Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

The Moor's Last Sigh

3.91 of 5 stars 3.91 · rating details · 6,262 ratings · 342 reviews

In The Moor's Last Sigh Salman Rushdie revisits some of the same ground he covered in his greatest novel, Midnight's Children. This book is narrated by Moraes Zogoiby, aka Moor, who speaks to us from a grave in Spain. Like Moor, Rushdie knows about a life spent in banishment from normal society--Rushdie because of the death sentence that followed The Satanic Verses, Moor b...more

Paperback, 434 pages

Published July 4th 1996 by Vintage (first published 1995)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Best South Asian Fiction

32nd out of 195 books — 894 voters

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

Best Books of the 21st Century

272nd out of 3,588 books — 9,496 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Feb 17, 2013 Kalliope rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-english, india, asia

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 wit...more

20 likes · like · see review

Apr 09, 2013 Ashley Sperling rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 seeme...more

3 likes · like · see review

Sep 10, 2008 Russ rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 20thcentury, fiction

The Moor's Last Sigh is Rushdie's best book since Midnight's Children and is superior to The Ground Beneath Her Feet. 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 h...more

5 likes · like · see review

Apr 21, 2008 Adam rated it 3 of 5 stars

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...more

5 likes · like · see review

Jan 17, 2008 Robert rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

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 thematical...more

5 likes · like · see review

Jan 05, 2013 Monthly Book Group rated it 4 of 5 stars

The final chapters of the book, and the opening chapter, to which they loop back, are packed (or “palimpsested”) with historical allusions. Moraes is not only Muhammad XI (Abu-Abd-Allah, or Boabdil, in the Spanish corruption of his name): he sees himself as Dante in “an infernal maze” of tourists, drifting yuppie zombies, and also as Martin Luther, looking for doors on which to nail the pages of his life story, as well as Jesus on the Mount of Olives, waiting for his persecutors to arrive. It is...more The final chapters of the book, and the opening chapter, to which they loop back, are packed (or “palimpsested”) with historical allusions. Moraes is not only Muhammad XI (Abu-Abd-Allah, or Boabdil, in the Spanish corruption of his name): he sees himself as Dante in “an infernal maze” of tourists, drifting yuppie zombies, and also as Martin Luther, looking for doors on which to nail the pages of his life story, as well as Jesus on the Mount of Olives, waiting for his persecutors to arrive. It is hard to avoid the impression that all the left-over analogues of the Moor fable from Rushdie’s notebooks have been poured into these chapters, which are as a result frantic and overwritten while elementary rules of fiction, like not introducing new characters in the last pages, are ignored.

Rushdie pursues palimpsesting with considerable vigour in The Moor’s Last Sigh, as a novelistic, historiographical, and autobiographical device. Thus Granada, Boabdil’s lost capital, is also Bombay, “inexhaustible Bombay of excess,” the sighed-for home of Moraes as well as of the author over whose person he is written. Both are cities from which a regenerative cross-fertilization of cultures might have taken place, but for ethnic and religious intolerance.

Like Midnight’s Children (1981), Shame (1983), and The Satanic Verses (1989), The Moor’s Last Sigh is a novel with large ambitions composed on a large scale. In its architecture, however, the Group found it disappointing. Aside from the dynastic prelude set in Cochin, and the last fifty pages set in Spain, the body of the book belongs to Moraes’s life in Bombay. But instead of the interwoven development of character, theme, and action characteristic of the middle section of what might be called the classic novel, the middle section of Rushdie’s novel makes only fitful and episodic progress. New actors are introduced with enough inventiveness and wealth of detail to justify major roles; yet all too often their contribution to the action turns out to be slight, and they slipped (or were slipped) out of the picture almost whimsically. It was also argued by some in the Group that those without a good knowledge of the history of the period both in Bombay and wider India would struggle with the narrative.

To complaints of this kind—which have been voiced with regard to the earlier books as well—defenders of Rushdie have responded by arguing that he works, and should therefore be read, within two narrative traditions: of the Western novel (with its subgenre, the anti-novel à la Tristram Shandy), and of Eastern story-cycles like the Panchatantra, with their chainlike linking of self-contained, shorter narratives. To such critics, Rushdie is a multicultural writer not merely in the weak sense of having roots in more than one culture but in the strong sense of using one literary tradition to renew another.

It is not easy to counter this defence in its general form, particularly from the position of an outsider to India. But to take a single instance from The Moor’s Last Sigh: the episode in which Moraes’s father, Abraham Zogoiby, in a fit of enthusiasm for the modern, impersonal, “management” style in business, adopts a young go-getter named Adam over Moraes as his son and heir. For some fifteen pages Adam occupies centre stage. Then he is dropped from the book. Most of the Group found the episode unsatisfying; further, we would hazard a guess that the reason why Adam disappears is not that Rushdie is following traditional Indian models but that he is only half-heartedly committed to satirizing the business-school ethos; he abandons this particular narrative strand because it is leading nowhere.

Others disagreed, enjoying the stories of Adam and other personages who blazed briefly across the pages of The Moor’s Last Sigh and then expired….

This is an extract from a review at: http://www.monthlybookgroup.com/ Our reviews are also to be found at http://monthlybookgroup.blogspot.com/

(less)

1 like · like · see review

Feb 09, 2009 Leah rated it 5 of 5 stars

“Even when people are telling their own life stories, they are invariably improving on the facts, rewriting their tales, or just plain making them up… the truth of such stories lies in what they reveal about the protagonists’ hearts, rather than their deeds.” (135)

“There is nothing to be said of a Fact except that it is so. – For may one negotiate with a Fact, sir? – In no wise! – May one stretch it, shrink it, condemn it, beg its pardon? No; or, it would be folly indeed to seek to do so. – How...more

2 likes · like · see review

Apr 26, 2013 Jelena rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

“The Moor’s Last Sigh” has about everything you would expect from one of Rushdie’s novels. The story of several generations of a dysfunctional Bombay family, their eccentricities and decadence, is full raw emotion and set into the colourful development of India’s history.

With its carnival of temper, madness, prophecy, allusions and several detours like the one set in Alhambra or the world of pictures, this novel is still rather linear for the author’s terms. But even so some threads simply get...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 29, 2012 Max rated it 5 of 5 stars

Going against my better judgement, I read this book on a recommendation from a drummer. He prefers the term, "percussionist," but we all know what he really is. He gave me the book for free. I lugged it around in my suitcase for a year (twice!)before I cracked it open.
Once inside, I found the world Rushdie created so full of metaphor and social commentary that I had a hard time distinguishing the story from historical anecdotes of various wealthy families I'd heard over the years.
Poetic, unp...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jul 16, 2012 Harald Gao rated it 4 of 5 stars

ooh...I really, really wanted to give this a 5-star rating....I reserve that for books that strike me as indubitably amazing and that didn't strike me as having any (major) flaws, and unfortunately The Moor's Last Sigh just doesn't match up.

Reading through it, I loved the book. This will be my third Rushdie novel, and I really wanted it to be as good as Midnight's Children - for a good 80% of the book, I thought it was that good, easily. I used this phrase to describe the book to a friend, but R...more ooh...I really, really wanted to give this a 5-star rating....I reserve that for books that strike me as indubitably amazing and that didn't strike me as having any (major) flaws, and unfortunately The Moor's Last Sigh just doesn't match up.

Reading through it, I loved the book. This will be my third Rushdie novel, and I really wanted it to be as good as Midnight's Children - for a good 80% of the book, I thought it was that good, easily. I used this phrase to describe the book to a friend, but Rushdie has a vicious insouciance about his writing early on - picking out, weaving, and then discarding story threads for only infrequent later use at best; he does this with complete mastery. His characters are compelling, his environments and devices and little fixations lovely and charming.... This all continues throughout the first three (out of four) parts, when much of the book's story comes to a head.

The fourth part is where things fall apart. It's by no means bad writing - still compelling - but with the way the third part wrapped up, it was necessarily robbed of a lot of interesting elements. It tries its level best to continue what can be continued and to introduce new threads relevant to the old ones, but things introduced so late just can't match up to the rest of the story. The ending, I thought, was also a poor way to go, and while it tried to riff off the idea of "The Moor's Last Sigh" (which Rushdie did over and over again in the earlier parts of the story as well) it ended up feeling a bit forced to me. It just seems...cut off. The bulk of the story concluded in part three, and so part four's attempts to wrap up what's left over just feel shallow. Midnight's Children remains my favorite of Rushdie's works.

Still well worth a read and the first 80-85% of the book is Rushdie at his absolute best, I really do believe that. If you've ever liked anything he's read, you'll love that. But the ending, though a valiant effort, just drops the ball hard. (less)

1 like · like · see review

Jun 07, 2012 Kailash rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites

This is an epic about many things : about Bombay, about growing up and about the different manifestations of love; but most of all, it is about women, about four generations of strong, proud, flawed mothers, wives & daughters, and their culmination into one ultimate flawed, hapless, helpless man - MOOR. The plot is a family history, a narrative of the life stories of 4 generations of the Da Gama/Zogoiby family where not one member is perfect (which is probably a true reflection of real-life...more This is an epic about many things : about Bombay, about growing up and about the different manifestations of love; but most of all, it is about women, about four generations of strong, proud, flawed mothers, wives & daughters, and their culmination into one ultimate flawed, hapless, helpless man - MOOR. The plot is a family history, a narrative of the life stories of 4 generations of the Da Gama/Zogoiby family where not one member is perfect (which is probably a true reflection of real-life where everyone has his/her share of imperfections). Moraes 'Moor' Zogoiby, the last son of the Zogoiby family, and the narrator, takes us on a journey from the origins of his family tree all the way to his final hours, where we see the successes & the failings of his family. We see them becoming exceedingly rich professionally, and reaching a shocking level of moral decay, with a climax that is shocking for its savagery.

The writing doesn't have Rowling's simplicity, King's invention or Dan Brown's breathless pace; but what it lacks is more than made up by an amazingly inventive narrative style and an almost magical play on/with words. The simple, straightforward story becomes an extraordinary achievement thanks to the narration. Most writers have one, proven style of narration and stick to it; Rushdie on the other hand, seems to constantly experiment with and evolve his prose style, and in the process finds exhiliratingly original ways of narration.

His manipulation of words is astonishing at times, and the inventiveness of his narrative style is always brilliant. His ability to take simple acts, and describe them, so as to effortlessly ascribe to them profound meanings and philosophical connotations is truly exhilirating. And thus, from the simple act of breathing, he comes up with the following : "I sigh, therefore I am. A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning." This was one book which never seemed to end, partly because it is fairly long, but also because there were so many passages of mind-blowing writing that I couldn't resist reading these over and over to savour the magic of his words.

An epic in every sense of the word.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Nov 27, 2011 Ajk rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

So this is, I think, my third Rushdie book I've read. I think my favorite part of reading multiple books by the same guy is that you get a sense of what characters he likes and what gets set aside for another book. I found about three side characters in this book that made their way into Enchantress of Florence. It's funny that way. There's like a little Rushdie universe that gets deconstructed and remade in a new image every book, where the same personalities get recast and put into new relatio...more So this is, I think, my third Rushdie book I've read. I think my favorite part of reading multiple books by the same guy is that you get a sense of what characters he likes and what gets set aside for another book. I found about three side characters in this book that made their way into Enchantress of Florence. It's funny that way. There's like a little Rushdie universe that gets deconstructed and remade in a new image every book, where the same personalities get recast and put into new relationships. It's fun to read, you can almost see it as an experiment where he sees who clashes with who, who falls in love, and who gets to be the hero.

In The Moor's Last Sigh, though there is no hero. I mean, sure, there's a protagonist, but Moraes Zogoiby is noone's hero. Least of all his own. He's hardly even the focus of the story. One would argue that the entire da Gama side of his family, three generations of women so strong and beautiful they could only exist in book form, are the heroes. Except for the family drama that intercepts their family business (spices!) and the proof that all of the da Gamas (and Zogoibys, and any other family mentioned) are all hideously morally corrupt. In many ways its a Follett novel in India.

And that is the other argument, I suppose. That this book isn't about family, its about India. There's lots of inside jokes...wordplay, codeswitching, and the like, which require some background on India to get. And for those that don't know India that much? There's wikipedia. I love the wordplay, though, it makes it fun and lighthearted to read, even when we're talking about the illegal labor market of Bombay. The lightheartedness of it even can serve to emphasize how awful some of these things are.

In my personal opinion, Moor's Last Sigh isn't as good as the other two I've read, Enchantress of Florence and Shalimar the Clown. Again, this is just me. Moor's Last Sigh was up for some pretty awesome awards, so I may very well be in the wrong here. But I just felt that it wasn't as tightly written or as detailed, because of the family issue and the fact that there are so many "main characters" to focus on. And as much as Rushdie focuses on and raphsodizes about Bombay, I never really had a Feeling of Bombay. It isn't an ode to the city, as much as it talks about how wonderful the city is. I've never been to Bombay. I have no more, or less, desire to go after reading this book. Bombay is almost a non-place in this book, like something out of BLDGBlog. Though I suppose that could be on purpose, because Moraes never truly "lived" in Bombay, or anywhere else for that matter. But for all of these huge questions and sketchinesses in the book, somehow, because he says so, everything falls in its right place.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jul 28, 2011 Derek Baldwin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found this tough going at times, especially the first several chapters where a wide cast of characters are introduced, sometimes fleetingly, making it tricky to keep track of who is who. The language is very rich and the texture of the story is often - but not always - very dense: you can have several pages of fine details, and then a page or two in which a lot of ground is covered very economically. This forces you to read very attentively or risk missing some vital turn of the plot. Even so,...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 21, 2010 Moira Burke rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: for-recommendations, favorites

"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. Favorite passages:

The first point to note is that people's limbs got detached more easily in those days. The banners of British domination hung over th

...more "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. Favorite passages:

The first point to note is that people's limbs got detached more easily in those days. The banners of British domination hung over the country like strips of flypaper, and, in trying to unstick ourselves from those fatal flags, we flies—if I may use the term 'we' to refer to a time before my birth—would often leave legs or wings behind, preferring freedom to wholeness.

[The prostitutes] came from the temples of South India, I regret to say, especially from those shrines dedicated to the worship of a certain Karnataka goddess, Kellamma, wo seemed incapacle of protecting her poor young 'disciples' . . . it is a matter of record that in our sorry age with its prejudice in favor of male children many poor families donated to their favored cult-temple the daughters they could not afford to marry off or feed,in the hope that they might live in holiness as servants or, if they were fortunate, as dancers; vain hope, alas, for in many cases the priests in charge of these temples were men in whom the highest standards of probity were mysteriously absent, a failing which laid them open to offers of cash on the nail for the young virgins and not-quite-virgins and once-again-virgins in their charge. Thus Abraham the spice merchant was able to use his widespread Southen connections to harvest a new crop, entered in his most secret ledgers as 'Garam Masala Super Quality', and also, I note with some embarrassment, 'Extra Hot Chilli Peppers: Green.'

Jimmy tried to tell her that he and Ina had not signed the full, holy, brimstone-and-treacle type of contract, having opted instead for the fifty-dollar Midnight Special country-style civil nuptial 'n' hoedown in a Reno quickie 'Wed-Inn' parlour, that they had been married to the music of Hank William Sr rather than hymns ancient or modern, standing not before an altar but beside a 'Hitching Post': that there had been no priest officiating, but a man in a ten-gallon hat with a pair of pearl-handled six-guns riding on his hips, and that at the moment they were pronounced man and wife, a rodeo cowboy in chaps, and with a polka-dotted bandanna round his neck, had stepped up tightly behind them with a mighty yahoo and lassoed them tightly together.

"(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jan 01, 2011 Alan Wightman rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Rushdie delivers again with another lengthy, multi-faceted epic. Moraes Zogoiby, an Indian Jew/Christian living in Cochin then Bombay, grows at twice the normal rate. It is this kind of outrageous premise that makes Rushdie so brilliant when he is believable. Strongly reminiscent of Midnight's Children, except that here India seems to be working against our "hero" - a real undertone of India marginalising people.

And yet:

"The alhambra, the palace of interlocking forms and secret wisdom, that monu...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 25, 2010 Aistė rated it 4 of 5 stars

Kodėl sagos apie šeimas tokios patrauklios? Ar ne todėl, kad primena giminės paslaptis, genijus, nevykėlius ir piktadarius, kurių turi kiekviena šeima, taip pat ir maniškė? "Prisikasti iki šaknų - visų tų šeimos kivirčų, belaikių mirčių, sužlugdytų meilių, beprotiškų aistrų, silpnų krūtinių, galios ir pinigų, ir doroviškai net labiau abejotinų meno vilionių bei slėpinių"... Rushdie ieško šaknų. Pasaulio perėjūno, atstumtojo, "nenormalaus", asmenybės, ribojamos valdingos šeimos ir istorijos, šakn...more

2 likes · like · see review

Nov 13, 2009 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Moor's Last Sigh isn't Midnight's Children, but it's not The Enchantress of Florence, either. It's good, solidly-rushing Rushdie, swimming in glorious language and wordplay and occasionally getting lost in an epic sea.

The beginning dragged a bit: at first, I thought I was reading an epic as fluffy as The Enchantress of Florence. Come on, Salman, get over these fantastical women already. I know you're in love, but they're not real!

But the book picks up once the Moor himself arrives. Reading m...more

1 like · like · see review

Nov 23, 2009 Derek rated it 4 of 5 stars

Salman Rushdie sets up a fairly elaborate cast of characters, so it takes some time to get acquainted with this book. I started this book before and couldn't devote enough time to sit down and really get into it (which is strange since I was unemployed at the time). But if you can sit down, focus, bang out the first 50 pages, and figure out the family tree, the book will suck you in. Rushdie's prose is incredible, and he can have a tendency to get too lost in his own language at the expense of t...more

1 like · like · see review

Sep 20, 2012 Perry Whitford rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I decided to give Rushdie another chance after the indulgent drivel of "Fury", figuring that anyone capable of producing something as marvelous as Midnight's Children has the sort of credit in their account that can survive any subsequent folly. True enough, The Moor's Last Sigh is moored in the familiar territories of that earlier masterwork, meaning it's set in India at the time of the Partition and the Emergency and is written in the magic realist style that owes so much to Gabriel Garcia Mar...more I decided to give Rushdie another chance after the indulgent drivel of "Fury", figuring that anyone capable of producing something as marvelous as Midnight's Children has the sort of credit in their account that can survive any subsequent folly. True enough, The Moor's Last Sigh is moored in the familiar territories of that earlier masterwork, meaning it's set in India at the time of the Partition and the Emergency and is written in the magic realist style that owes so much to Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Family events run parallel in time and meaning with public events, fortunes rise and fall, but Rushdie leaves us in no doubt that it will all end badly in treachery and murder.
I liked it, though with reservations.

A family saga over four generations of growing wealth founded on the spice industry, the Zogoiby-De Gamas (dubiously) trace their origins to the Portuguese founders of modern Cochin and the descendants of the last Moor of Grenada, Boabdil. typical to Rushdie, the family is full of forceful, furious and ill-fated women, watery men with various weaknesses or ailments but hidden strengths, and the story is replete with little flickers of fabulism here and there (bereaved lovers wake from erotic dreams with scratches from their dead spouse, decorative temple tiles tell uncanny stories). There is also the occasional fully flamed fantasy conceit, such as the assertion that the narrator lives his whole life, from conception, at double speed, therefore becoming a man whilst still a boy, a pensioner whilst still a young man.

The story is compelling enough, expertly told, linearly but with a great number of digressions and peaks and hints to what is to come. The writing is unquestionably impressive for the most part, but chief amongst my reservations is Rushdie's habit of fawningly cajoling you as a reader to empathise with his narrator and admire how clever he is as a writer. The man can't help it, he has to be admired at all costs, a vanity that "Fury" was thrown up out of and which I also think informs my other problem with him, the (again) fawning regard for luxury and fame that saturates his work, souring it more than any potent spice could.
(less)

like · see review

Nov 28, 2012 Matilda rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: asian-fiction

A week ago I went to see Salman Rushdie talk about his memoirs. In preparation I decided to read something by him, and picked The Moor’s Last Sigh from my shelf. The book had been there for quite some time, being picked up only to be put back again. Somehow I just did not seem to have the energy for Rushdie’s writing. The truth is that this state of mind still applied when I committed to reading the book, but this time my mind was firm, so I read it from beginning to end.

There is much to admire...more A week ago I went to see Salman Rushdie talk about his memoirs. In preparation I decided to read something by him, and picked The Moor’s Last Sigh from my shelf. The book had been there for quite some time, being picked up only to be put back again. Somehow I just did not seem to have the energy for Rushdie’s writing. The truth is that this state of mind still applied when I committed to reading the book, but this time my mind was firm, so I read it from beginning to end.

There is much to admire in The Moor’s last sigh. Rushdie has an amazing talent for writing and the language is beautifully crafted. But sometimes this barrage of words feels like too much. The sentences are long, and unless you concentrate you easily get lost. Here is an example of a beautiful passage:

"How to forgive the world for its beauty, which merely disguises its ugliness; for its gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuity, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak- whereas in reality life is a series of brutal raptures, falling upon your defenseless hands, like the blows of a woodman’s axe?” (The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie)

It is a lovely passage, but even when reading these lines, you have to pay a lot of attention to punctuation in order to avoid re-reading the lines a few times. The problem is that the entirety of this densely lined book is filled with intricately wrought sentences like the above. This is fine if you are in the mood for a careful read, but in my tired Autumn mood I was not up to the challenge.

In addition to the language, the story itself is also worthy of admiration. The story spans several generations, with one tale more incredible than the other. But there are so many characters and so many stories that somehow I ended up not able to root for any of the characters. And this was not because of their questionable deeds. I enjoy reading about characters who blur the lines between good and evil and cherish books that can give me insight into why ordinary people end up doing bad things. In this book there were simply too many and no real explanation for their deeds. When the main character finally came into the picture I had already had my fill of bizarre stories. I did feel some empathy towards his predicament, growing old twice as fast as other people, but not enough to really care about what happened to him.

So although there is much to value in this book, for me it remained an objective admiration for a fine work of art. Only on rare moments did the book manage to captivate me or move me in any significant way. The next book I read is bound to be something completely different.(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Aug 27, 2012 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I've just read back the following review and it sounds like I didn't enjoy the book - I did, and would recommend it albeit with reservations.

Rushdie can be very wordy, and it slows his stories down - though in a story spanning four generations like this perhaps that is OK.

When he used Indian-English colloquialisms and description of the smells of spices I felt transported to India - but then at other times I found I had to bring myself back and reread a descriptive passage because it hadn't gri...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 23, 2012 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: art, comedy, drama

I'm going tough on Rushdie with this rating: it's a really high 3. Akin with his usual work there are some incredible passages here. Midway through it my interest fizzled out, either because it didn't have enough direction or the narrator seemed to be choking on his english-hindu hybrid language. In a lot of ways it was similar to Midnight's Children in that we get to follow a family saga through the history of India and the narrator has a supernatural issue. I didn't really want to read a secon...more

3 likes · like · see review

Oct 10, 2009 JL rated it 4 of 5 stars

That I could taste the smells of a land I'd never been to. That if I ever had a child, I would name it Aerish. That I could fall in love with the way this man took you on a little turn. I read this book every morning after I returned from coaching...a top the little village of Sha Tin in New Territories of Hong Kong...always with my Marks and Spencer from a box cappuccino. It was the first book I read there and I remember it so well because I got to actually enjoy it. I didn't have to run off to...more

1 like · like · see review

Oct 04, 2009 Orionisisgray rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 I...more

7 likes · like · see review

Sep 29, 2011 Saimah rated it 4 of 5 stars

If I had even the slightest doubt about Salman Rushdie's writing prowess (not that I had), I knew it will disappear as soon as I found myself flipping the pages to see the da Gama-Zogoiby family hierarchy of The Moor's Last Sigh.

By the time I reached the end of this book it struck me again, that Salman Rushdie is definitely a magician. Once in his hands, the words flow like a stream. Smooth, yet turbulent. Clear, yet enchanting. Simple, yet complex. Easy, yet profound.

Magic Realism at its best!

T...more

1 like · like · see review

Aug 18, 2011 Sophie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Salman Rushdie is the kind of author that makes me feel like an idiot. But I totally love his books, perhaps for this reason, perhaps because not many other living authors have such a command of the English language in my opinion. Or if they do, they write boring stories in a stylish prose. The Moor's Last Sigh took me a long time to get into and long time to finish, because I can only manage so many pages before my brain needs a rest and it's not what I'd call pre-bedtime reading. However, desp...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 15, 2011 Yllacaspia rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book flirtatiously. Which is to say that I used to always see the same gorgeous man on the bus. He had blond dreadlocks and wore a suit, which is one of my favourite looks. He always had a book with him, as did I, and I would catch him looking at my book and he would catch me looking at his book. And one day I decided to make him laugh by taking the same book he was reading: which is how I ended up reading The Moor's Sigh. And I got totally wrapped up in this beautiful story which wi...more

2 likes · like · see review

Jun 19, 2009 Christopher rated it 2 of 5 stars

In my years of reviewing here, I've been loath to review a book I didn't read all the way through. But sometimes I encounter a book that I don't merely feel isn't worth my time, but which is so awful I just can't help but warn others. Salman Rushdie's THE MOOR'S LAST SIGH is such a book.

I was on a roll with Rushdie, enjoying his debut MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN, long holding THE SATANIC VERSES as one of my favourite novels, and reading his nonfiction of the 1980s with pleasure. With THE MOOR's LAST SIG...more

like · see review

Apr 08, 2012 Texbritreader rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary-fiction, novel, indian

Rushdie offers a richly detailed family saga, full of passion and genius as well as secrets, lies and betrayals. Told by the multidimensional Moor of the title, Moraes Zogoiby, the tale begins with his grandparents generation and ends with the Moor's own demise. But between those two points Rushdie, in impeccable form, creates a fantastical exploration of Indian history, presents complex arguments about and descriptions of art, and questions the place and meaning of various religious affiliation...more

2 likes · like · see review

Mar 01, 2013 Rebecca White rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this book up after reading Cutting For Stone because I was looking for another tremendous book. I was a bit put off by Rushdie when I tried to read The Enchantress of Florence - simply because I was not so well versed in the historical setting he had used for the story.

I'm glad I moved past my own shortcoming in historical fiction and picked this book up. Although dense and a bit loquacious at times, it was splendid. I loved his blend of delivery - both the erudite and the simplistic,...more

2 likes · like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Indian Readers: Salman Rushdie - The Moor's Last Sigh	10	25	Apr 04, 2013 11:55pm

combine
Other Editions (44)

More editions...

Genres

Cultural > India

52 users

Literature

39 users

Magical Realism

27 users

Asian Literature > Indian Literature

23 users

Contemporary

22 users

Novels

17 users

Literary Fiction

11 users

Historical Fiction

10 users

Modern

7 users

Fantasy

5 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Salman Rushdie

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is a novelist and essayist. Much of his early fiction is set at least partly on the Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as magical realism, while a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world.

His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, led to protests from Muslims in several coun...more

More about Salman Rushdie...

Books by Salman Rushdie

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About The Moor's Last Sigh

5 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from The Moor's Last Sigh

“A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.” — 50 people liked it

“We crave permission openly to become our secret selves.” — 38 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: The Moor's Last Sigh
avg rating	preview: The Moor's Last Sigh Goodreads rating: 3.91 (6262 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9865.The_Moor_s_Last_Sigh?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1359386233l/9865.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9865.The_Moor_s_Last_Sigh?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie[/url]

The Moor's Last Sigh

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website