A wonderful blend of fairy tale and library :) Felt like I took an awesome ride in Disney world and Literary world, loved it very much!

You know Salman Rushdie has a lot of fun writing, and there's not a single word that feels forced. Every play on a word or a cultural reference is deliberate and just fits. This was my first Rushdie and I rue the fact that I will never look at this book as a 'children's' book, I just won't have the perspective of aloofness. I understood all the veiled political allusions and innuendos, the undercurrents of violence and the reference to "Koche-mer". It was sort of interesting to encounter the (admittedly outdated) notion of having stories for the sake of stories, the social bind that discursive yarnspinning that we engage in, that inherently has value, speech for the sake of speech. It seems a little simplistic in the age of social media, but as a piece of SF and magical realism, this book is a liberal's delight. I'd still commend this book for the extremely coherent and tidy writing that Rushdie enchanted me with (seriously, how can you be so efficient and yet be so playful with your prose?), as well as the ending, where he's aware of the happy ending is artificial, it was created in a bottle, but you take what you get. Does the source of happiness really matter in a town that was so sad its inhabitants had forgotten the town's name and had no reason to be happy? However, I can't ignore the book's simplistic nod to the black/white binary that appears in multiple places in the book.

This is a book for anyone who has ever said, "Daddy, tell me a story." Or for any father who has heard that plea.

And that's what this book really is, a yarn, a make-it-up-as-you-go fairy tale, that Rushdie actually wrote at the behest of his young son. Of course, like The Wizard of Oz, it is also so much more.

The clues are in the names. In fact, we are told early on: All names mean something. Hmmm. What was that Valley of K called once upon a time? Was it Kosh-Mar? Kache-Mer? And the slimy politician, so cleverly called Snooty Buttoo.

Princes can get like that. But don't worry. We don't really let them do anything important around here.

There are not just political references, but cultural ones. The Shadow Warrior gurgles Gogogol and Kafkafka. The young boy in the story is helped by the Eggheads. Or was it the Walrus?

As always, Rushdie's marvelous word-play is on full display. A figure of speech is a slippery thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight.

GOO GOO GOO JOOB!

Haroun and the Sea of Stories reminded me very much of The Phantom Tollbooth, especially, of course, in its use of allegory.
I thought this would make a good reading assignment for a middle schooler. I can't say it affected me any which way at age 42 except that I was not immune to the horribly depressing image of the sea of stories being choked by poisons. I guess I also thought it was interesting that the son's pronouncement on the father's stories could have such a profound effect.

Salman Rushdie, Umberto Ecco, Milan Kundera - for right or wrong, I always lump these three literary dignitaries together, perhaps just because they all shared life and fame in the same decades and share a similar (European) sensibility.

Sau khi xuất bản quyển : “những vần thơ của Quỷ sa tăng” thì anh Rushdie bị truy sát. Ảnh lẩn trốn và cuối cùng cho ra quyển Haroun và biển truyện. Độc giả náo nức, người hâm mộ tò mò về cuộc sống của ảnh sau thời kì ấy. Được xem như một câu truyện ngụ ngôn về tự do dân chủ và ngôn luận, tự do tưởng tượng, tự do sáng tạo của Rushdie.
Cultmaster Khattam-shud đã hoàn thành tốt vai diễn Ayatollah Khomeini mà Rushdie thiết kế cho. Bà con háo hức theo dõi từng bước chân Haroun, cùng với sự dũng cảm cậu đã giải cứu thành công tự do ngôn luận, tự do dân chủ, tự do sáng tạo thoát khỏi sự kiểm duyệt.

Halo, Centrala PRE-ZA5-ZA-OT5, zovem da Vam kažem da je ova knjiga bila u svakom smislu, potpuno i apsolutno, stoprocentno, zasigurno i beskonačno M✨A✨G✨I✨Č✨N✨A!

Absolutely beautiful story!

I was a bit wary of reading it since I didn’t care for Rushdie’s Luka and the Fire of Life which is akin in that they’re both YA/children’s books and were both written for one of his sons. But Haroun is a lot deeper than Luka, and a lot more enjoyable.

On the surface, it’s a fun quest story about Haroun trying to get his father’s storytelling talent back. On a deeper level, there’s all sorts of metaphor about free speech; about how if speech is truly free, it MUST include the ability and even a duty to say anything you wish, including questioning your leaders.

It has silly puns which will appeal to younger readers, but also more refined jokes for an older audience that will go right over kids’ heads. And wonderful prose.

I love and admire Rushdie for his intelligence and his stand against the legends of intolerance, ignorance, and violence, but I didn't love this book for his son. There are pockets of joy, the girl child, Blabbermouth wears the disguise of a boy to get a job and when she is unveiled she yells at Haroun,
"Don't you know girls have to fool people every day of their lives if they want to get anywhere?"
Also, Rushdie's description of the villain, ". . . a skinny, scrawny, snivelling, drivelling, mingy, stingy, measly, weaselly, clerkish sort of fellow, who had no shadow but seemed almost as much a shadow as a man."

Brilliant! Although a children's book I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think it would be a great book to read out loud. I loved that with my background knowledge of Salman Rushdie I could read more into the text. He wrote this book for his son, I think around the time he and his son's mum split up and also around the time of the fatwa. I think this book is certainly inspired by both and it seems Rushdie's idea was to write this book to help his son cope with both situations. I loved all the little word plays throughout. Especially the Plentimaw Fish! Also loved all the different characters. As a kid I would have loved imagining what these characters looked like and then drawing them all (I stopped drawing when I got older, as I am terrible at it).
Can't wait to have kids just to be able to read this to them! I like how it's, probably, immensely enjoyable for kids, but great for adults too.

English review below.

Al Libraccio avevo trovato Luka e il fuoco della vita a un prezzo stracciato. Visto che mi piace Salman Rushdie ho deciso di comprarlo senza cercare informazioni o recensioni. Aggiuntolo qui su GR, un paio di amici mi hanno detto che si tratta del secondo libro di una serie e che sarebbe stato meglio leggere prima Harun e il mar delle storie per non perdere riferimenti. Detto fatto.

Salman Rushdie scrive veramente bene e anche questo libro ha delle genialità che sicuramente si perdono con la traduzione. Non soltanto. I nomi di alcuni personaggi sono presi dal sanscrito o dall'hindi e c'è un motivo ben preciso. Un personaggio, per esempio, si chiama Mudra perché parla solo a gesti, un altro che non sta mai zitto si chiama Batcheat che significa "chiacchericcio", la città dei bravi si chiama Kahani che vuol dire "storia", etc. Alla fine del libro ci sono le varie spiegazioni, ma non è la stessa cosa come capirli durante la lettura.

Dovrebbe essere un libro per bambini ma non ne sono mica molto sicura. Sembra una classica fiaba perché c'è un Oceano di Storie, i bravi che pensano a tenere pulito questo Oceano, il loro esercito fatto di soldati chiamati Pagine, e poi suddiviso in Capitoli e Volumi. I cattivi invece amano il silenzio, l'oscurità e vogliono avvelenare l'Oceano per inquinare le storie cambiandone il lieto fine. Inoltre, gli abitanti del regno oscuro sottostanno al capo cattivo più per paura che per convinzione. Insomma, ci vedo anche una denuncia da parte di Rushdie alla censura e ai regimi dittatoriali. Infatti ha scritto questo libro vivendo in esilio dopo la pubblicazione de I versi satanici. Sono sicura che ci sono anche altre allegorie, ma probabilmente me le son perse. Quindi, sì, l'ha scritto come un libro per bambini, ma per tutta la lettura ho avuto l'impressione che era rivolto a un pubblico adulto.

English

Some time ago I bought at a stand with second hand books Luka and the Fire of Life. I took it because I like Salman Rushdie so I didn't look for informations or reviews. When I added it on GR, a couple of friends told me that that is the second of a series, so I bought also the first book: Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

It should be a children's book, but I've seen also an allegory to censorship. Surely it is a fable for children, but Rushdie underlines also the importance of books, of reading and writing stories. In fact the bad ones live on the dark side of the planet, they don't like to talk and want to contaminate the Sea of Stories in order to pollute the Stories. The good ones like to talk, the light and take care of the Sea of Stories. Surely also children can catch Rushdie's message of the importance of writing and reading, but during the whole book I had the feeling that the author's audience were adults and not children. Rushdie wrote this book after the death threats due to the publication of The Satanic Verses, so the attack to censorship is in my opinion very strong.

Sadly with the translation, and not knowing Hindi or Sanscrit, I missed nearly all the meanings of the various names. I could understand only the name of the character Mudra! At the end of my edition there was an explanation, but it is not the same as understanding the various meanings while reading the book. There is the city Khalani that means "story", or Alifbay that means alphabet, Chup that means "silent" and if fact it is part of the name of the citizens of the dark site of the planet, etc. Rushdie is really a genious with such things, but sadly I often miss a lot!

Zembla, Zenda, Xanadu:
All our dream-worlds may come true.
Fairy lands are fearsome too.
As I wander far from view
Read, and bring me home to you.

The book is about Rashid, a master conversationalist who loves telling stories till Khattam Shud, the malevolent Prince of Silence and the enemy of speech pollutes the very spring of stories itself.

Rashid’s son Haroun rescues his father and returns to him the gift of story-telling.

“There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue.

In the north of the sad city stood mighty factories in which (so I’m told) sadness was actually manufactured, packaged and sent all over the world, which never seemed to get enough of it. Black smoke poured out of the chimneys of the sadness factories and hung over the city like bad news.

And in the depths of the city, beyond an old zone of ruined buildings that looked like broken hearts, there lived a happy young fellow by the name of Haroun, the only child of the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, whose cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis, and whose never-ending stream of tall, short and winding tales had earned him not one but two nicknames. To his admirers he was Rashid the Ocean of Notions, as stuffed with cheery stories as the sea was full of glumfish; but to his jealous rivals he was the Shah of Blah. To his wife, Soraya, Rashid was for many years as loving a husband as anyone could wish for, and during these years Haroun grew up in a home in which, instead of misery and frowns, he had his father’s ready laughter and his mother’s sweet voice raised in song.

Then something went wrong. (Maybe the sadness of the city finally crept in through their windows.)

The day Soraya stopped singing, in the middle of a line, as if someone had thrown a switch, Haroun guessed there was trouble brewing. But he never suspected how much….”

Adored by children and adults alike for its scrumptious concoction of escapade, magic and daydream, the book is read by many as a metaphor of Rushdie’s own quandary with a moving message to his ten-year-old son Zafar for whom he wrote the book.

A protest novel written in answer to Imam Khomeini’s fatwa, Haroun and the Sea of Stories dramatises, in the semblance of an ‘adventure story for children’, the representative struggles between oppressive regimes and the human yearning for autonomy of expression and the freedom of creative imagination.

Such a wonderful and funny story! And Butt the Hoopooe is <3