Salman Rushdie

by Catherine Cundy

Salman Rushdie is one of the major novelists of the last two decades. A writer at the forefront of the internationalisation of British fiction, his work is subjected to controversy and, unusually, to both critical and popular acclaim. Catherine Cundy's book, one of the first major studies of Rushdie's oeuvre, explores the diverse cultural influences and tensions that inform his fictions and highlights the complex blend of Eastern and Western ideas that shape his art. A short biographical piece prefaces the book, before moving into a chronological examination of his work. The novels and short stories are considered in relation to narrative technique, filmic influences, mythology, religion and national and sexual politics. Catherine Cundy also addresses the writer's claim of a new hybridised identity and literary style, in the light of current contemporary critical and post-colonial theory. This wide-ranging, accessible and scholarly study of the fictions of Salman Rushdie is also a useful resource where criticism is still largely confined to articles in journals and periodicals.

Genres: Literary Criticism

180 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1996

Reviews

[Arun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Critical study of Rushdie's oeuvre, analyzed via the theory of post-colonialism, post-modernism, magic-realism, and surrealism. It is self-tortured and split-brained in its methods of trying define/re-define all his novels published till 1995 to fit into some pattern of "critical theory" when Rushdie himself have professed that he took inspiration/models for his novels from "popular storytellers still practicing in the sub-continent" rather than using strict theoretical frameworks mentioned above. Ignoring these misgivings, the text is a superb introduction to the major themes, forms and contents of his novels - post-colonial loss of identity, unique role of memory in reconstructing history, positive aspect of creating new identity via "hybridization" of cultures, interstices of politics and religion and most importantly the inventiveness of the language.