This is my first book by Rushdie, and I am aware that is quite different than a lot of his other work, but even so, this was delightful. Whimsical, inventive, symbolic and quite fun. This is one I will definitely re-read in years to come.

A fair warning: everybody might not like this succinct story full of references to the need as well as pointlessness of censorship and allegory for several problems existing in society today, especially in India and the Indian subcontinent. Yes, the novel contains an allegory of the fight between the imagination, the forces of freedom, and the forces of obscurantism. But then, much like 'Le Petit Prince', all these subtle hints are well-hidden to the eye inexperienced to the genre of Magical Realism. To readers in search of a casual read and unfamiliar with the fatwa of February 14, 1989, it may seem 'a pathetic attempt' of Sir Rushdie at Children's Literature. But this book was much more than a silly story written by an author to please his kid!
Not only is 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories' a powerful parable full of deeper meanings; in my eyes, it is also a wonderful successor of Baum's 'The Wizard of Oz', Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings', and Lewis Carroll's 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' as well as the forerunner of our very own Mr. Harry Potter. (Don't believe me? Well, the Hoopoe and Buckbeak, the Chupwalas and the Dementors all seem like cater-cousins to me!)
But the best part of the book? Well, here it is: it shows that Rushdie still has pots and lots of stories to release in the Ocean of Tales which no Ayatollah can censor,not even with a thousand fatwas. Rather than retreating under the death threats, that he received after the much popular fatwa, Rushdie reiterates the importance of literature and celebrates the triumph of storytelling and imagination over raw power and dogmatism. It is this thought that makes 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories' a book worthy of five stars even if it's not 'the best Rushdie's given his fans'(which is a statement I don't agree with)!

"What's the use of stories that aren't even true"?
This is a classified as a children's book...perfect to read to an 8-10 year old. Yet..
now that I've read it ..( chucking..,smiling...moved...and enriched)...I can't
wait 'to play' now with this novel. It's to be read over and over. Storytelling with your friends.
Want to lie back and be read to by a close friend while sitting under a tree?
Or ..are you the 'ham' who loves to read to an active listener? This book is filled with
imagination--so why not use a little of our own with it?

Rushdie wrote this book in dedication to his son, Zafar. Rushdie went into
in hiding when in 1989, "The Satanic Verses" was released. Riots broke out in several countries
and Rushdie was sentenced to death by Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of the
Islamic Republic of Iran. He called upon Muslims to carry out his sentence. Later he
defended himself against the fatwa, a plea for freedom, thought and speech ... and expressing the value of imagination in literature.
This was the first novel ...'To Zafar'...that Rushdie wrote after "The Satanic Verses".

This story is about a celebrated storyteller, ( The Shah oh Blah"), who loses his talent for improvising stories when his wife leaves him. His son, Haroun, is unwillingly pulled into the
adventure involving an arduous journey to the sea of stories to vanquish a powerful enemies and reclaim his father's gift of gab.
Silence is the force of evil in this story. ( the squashing of language, fantasy, satire, even the truth itself).
There are allegories and light-hearted commentary woven into the tapestry. There are people
we must defend on principles such as freedom of expression.
The story is full of reflections about the importance and fantasy, myth, nature, and storytelling.
There's a treat for those who recognize the meaning of Indian words which are also given to most of the characters, and who know about the role of gestures, ( Mudra), made often
by green- painted performers in Indian Kathakali dancing.

Enchanting, profound, delightfully whimsical, and highly recommended for all ages!!!!

Suddenly the literary bigwigs--I'll simply blame the mystically average time between millennium switches--they decided to go further. Excellent bodies of work, of cleaving unto Madame Zeitgeist, would be on hold temporarily for something avant garde (that is, for drama heavy realities that win awards and make average films): fantasy fiction. Many came to the call: American Michael Cunningham had his SPECIMEN DAYS, English Kazuo Ishiguro did THE BURIED GIANT. Canadian Margaret Atwood's MADDADAM TRILOGY began with the dreamy beast ORYX AND CRAKE. And Salman Rushdie followed one of the most controversial books since THE BIBLE, THE SATANIC VERSES, with the fairytale within its own world of wonder. HAROUN is as light as CANDIDE--heck, it succeeds in its own strangeness and its affecting humor: no wonder HAROUN has much to say, much to learn.

I really enjoyed reading this in one day. (Last time I did this, was....?) It would not let go, each character was engineered with much imagination, a function in a metaphor for good versus evil: damn if they dont all have speaking patterns, odd ways of saying things, and still get surprised as much as we with every twist and turn.

Read at my girl's behest in, I think, 500BCE. A delight of a tale! Rushdie wrote the 2019 Booker shortlister Quichotte, which I disliked as much as I liked this book. I wonder if the audience focus of the two accounts for the disparity of response?

Hurrah for diverse books, before I say another word. I loved how this book drew on Pakistani/Muslim stories and imagery, and I enjoyed the company of its young protagonist. I'm sure younger readers will too. I was interested to see how Rushdie would adapt his style, and it seems he did so by indulging his taste for cliché and word play as much and as fantastically as possible. The magic in this fantasy yarn is all rooted in language; figures of speech come to life and behave unpredictably, metaphors become literal, and the whole lot gets an embroidery of tasty colloquialisms. I think that's why I found it a bit overcooked, a little bit too self conscious.

Another reason it seems self conscious is perhaps its transparent agenda; it's a parable in defense of freedom of speech. The righteous army argue about their orders extensively. The General loves a good debate, he's delighted to listen to the discussion. Finally they all proceed with commitment. Ace! Orwell wrote about the same thing happening in real life in Homage to Catalonia - no discipline problems. As well as the right of citizens to dissent and challenge authority, Rushdie wants the rights of storytellers to tell it their way to be sacrosanct, severely rebuking attempts at political interference. And quite right too!

But when the story is so openly didactic, the writer ought, I feel, to be careful about other things too. I've written about Rushdie's male-oriented but creative writing of gender before, but here it strikes me as simply sloppy. I waited over 100 pages for an interesting female character, and I liked her when she arrived, but she had heavy work against the sexism of her culture and even against her author to make up for the barely-written faithless wife, the damsel in distress used for light relief (although Haroun challenged it rather weakly and ambiguously - but what is with this purity-of-fairytales angle? Seriously needed work!) and the mockery of Princess Batcheet for her physical attributes.

Bizarre and funny, this classic Children’s tale is an ode to the magic that stories give life. A larger than life adventure filled with memorable characters, Haroun and the Sea of Stories is fun and wholesome for readers of all ages, and is vastly imaginative.

I'm surprised that Viking listed this as a children's literature. There's nothing risque in it of course, and it is structured a little like Alice in Wonderland, but I think it will appeal to both children and adults with its playful style and malleable language. There are a lot of puns, rhymes and plentiful wordplay.

Rushdie is ceaselessly inventive, and his stories within stories are both traditionally complex, and compulsively readable. I quite like the central symbol of the source for all the world's stories. It is a thought-provoking concept. Where do our stories really come from? I think humans have a propensity for storytelling, that it is a social act. Yet it lives deeper in us as well, stemming from our beliefs in myths throughout history. Our reliance on stories is endless. Similarly, this book captures the fascination children have with stories and how this curiosity draws them to more deeply understand the world.

Readers will catch many literary references. Anyone who likes a fantastical tale will appreciate his dreamlike whimsy. What's more, this novel was in the same vein as Grace Lin's fantasy series. They both played with mythic concepts and applied the tropes to a nostalgic setting. Apparently, Haroun has a sequel. I will likely check it out, along with Rushdie's other, more intimidating novels.

I always took Rushdie for a serious fellow for some reason. I probably shouldn't lump him in with other award winners like Kundera, Eco or Pamuk. The more I learn about him the more unique his work appears. But this book proved to me that he has a sense of humor. That discovery will likely be reinforced in my later exploration of his oeuvre.

An easy start to an author I hope I will grow to love.

Everything went well in Haroun's life until his mother left with the neighbor, and Rachid, his father, and king of storytellers, lost his temper. But Rachid has contracts to respect: the 1st is a disaster, and Haroun fears the worst for the 2nd. But during the night preceding this fateful day, Haroun discovers the wondrous world of the sea of ​​tales, where he will live extraordinary adventures. Rachid found inspiration and Haroun (and his city) the joy of living;
It is a beautiful story that Salman Rushdie wrote for his son with kind geniuses, narrow-minded officials, crooked politicians, many fabulous characters, and an awful cult guru who wants poison tales. We can read this story on several levels: a simple, entertaining fiction, a satire of some quirks of our modern society through not recommendable politicians or a scary cult guru, or a story of a loving son. He wants to do everything to help his dad.
I liked this story, which smells sweetly of the magical tales of the past. I noted with amusement that the bird chosen by Haroun is the hoopoe, which has been the guide bird par excellence since "The Conference of the Birds" by the Persian poet Farîd al-Dîn Attâr.

A delightful fairytale, told by a master. As a children’s book it deserves to be a classic, but in the end that’s what it is: a children’s book. Of course everything gets a very special meaning because of what had just happened to the writer when he wrote this and the book can even be interpreted as an admirably lighthearted answer to the grimness of the fatwa, including a heartbreaking dedication to his son, but I’m afraid I’m too old to fully appreciate the deliberate naivety.

This was recommended to me by Laurice as a children's novel--we both love kids' books--so I went into it expecting a children's book, albeit, a children's book as Salman Rushdie might approach children. As a 6th grade teacher, my first thoughts were that it would be too difficult to teach to my class (I prefer the teacher lens to the previous MFA creative writing student lens, but ultimately the best is when the lenses recede because I'm too far into the world of the book, which quickly happened), but my next thought was that this is an ageless (as in any age could read it) myth set so firmly in the 20th/21st c., with super computers and machine animals and evil people considering themselves significant enough to disrupt the planet on which they live--I kept expecting our friendly mechanical animals to be revealed as actually living, but they weren't, which in the end is perfect and more complex, and more of the moment of the book. However, the evil people do get theirs.

A great children's book on the level of The Little Prince, Alice in Wonderland, and the Brothers Grimm, full of story and character and metaphor in layers so that anybody can pull something out of it, and every time you read it again there will be another something.

In my typical way of not always respecting the order in which things were written, I read the follow-up book to Haroun and the Sea of Stories last year, and it came in as my second-favourite book of the year. Luka and the Fire of Life was one of those books that found a spot in my brain and nestled in like it had always belonged there.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook