Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Two years eight months and twenty-eight nights: a novel by Salman Rushdie

by
November 2015, no. 376

Two years eight months and twenty-eight nights: a novel by Salman Rushdie

Jonathan Cape, $32.99 pb, 286 pp, 9781910702048

Two years eight months and twenty-eight nights: a novel by Salman Rushdie

by
November 2015, no. 376

Kazuo Ishiguro recently sparked off a literary row about whether 'serious' writers should dabble in fantasy when he insisted rather too strongly that he was not writing fantasy in his latest novel The Buried Giant (2015). All those giants and pixies, knights and dragons were but a means to an end.

A strange controversy, considering a galaxy of 'serious' stars have been liberally using fantasy for decades. No one more than Salman Rushdie, who gave us a batch of Indian babies born with superpowers in Midnight's Children (1981), a subcontinental banshee of destruction in Shame (1983), angels and demons in 1988's The Satanic Verses (for which, as we all know, he paid a terrible price), and now a world of roistering jinn.

It is interesting to contrast Ishiguro's toe in the water of fantasy with Rushdie's triple somersault dive. On one side, Ingmar Bergman; on the other, Bollywood. Whereas Ishiguro offers an anaemic landscape with a feeble dragon and battles decided with one swing of a sword, Rushdie gives us colossal technicolour jinn riding on flying urns; giant snakes coiling round the Chrysler building; fire, smoke, and lightning; and a global war that endures for one thousand and one nights.

Jane Sullivan reviews 'Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights' by Salman Rushdie

Two years eight months and twenty-eight nights: a novel

by Salman Rushdie

Jonathan Cape, $32.99 pb, 286 pp, 9781910702048

You May Also Like

Leave a comment

If you are an ABR subscriber, you will need to sign in to post a comment.

If you have forgotten your sign in details, or if you receive an error message when trying to submit your comment, please email your comment (and the name of the article to which it relates) to ABR Comments. We will review your comment and, subject to approval, we will post it under your name.

Please note that all comments must be approved by ABR and comply with our Terms & Conditions.