A writer's read.

Rushdie's characterization and prose are flawless. There is a lot to be said about the way books affect the individual reader and this one is subjective to me. The book starts out in Cochin, in Jewtown, which happens to be the place of my father's birth. It then moves up to Mumbai - where I lived for 8 months - then travels to shots of Goa which was a little paradise away from my apt in bombay. It does eventually go to spain where I claim no personal attachment.

Lacking, and why this got 4 stars, was the scenic descriptions. The language and personification of each person in the book was wonderfully and painstainkly done. However had I not stood on Malabar Hill and looked across Queen's necklace and into the sea, if I had not watched the moonsoony and misty seas from the gateway of india while trying to catch a glimpse of Elephanta island, had I not squeaked with pleasure at the pink and red and yellow stone portuguese houses and beautifully shaped doorways and windows in Goa - i really would not have gathered as much enjoyment from this book. Rushdie fails to present it to his audience and it therefore falls a little short.

A rich epic tale describing the rise and fall, and recovery, and meteoric rise again until its annihilation, of a business dynasty in colonial India, up to the end of the 1980's. The family claims to count Vasco Da Gama among its ancestors and generates or attracts plenty of interesting and eccentric characters with each generation, whose lives sometimes intertwine with historical figures and movements such as the Ghandi's, Nehru, the painter Amrita Sher-Gil, Hindu fanaticism, corruption etc.

The title refers to the last descendant, called "Moor". His mother was a genius painter and the heiress of the business while his father was a Cochin Jew whose own mother claimed to be a descendant of the Jews fleeing Spain together with the last Moorish ruler of Granada.

I found the book never boring, and hard to put down,

Meu primeiro livro do autor, li pensando em alguém que escreveu "Versos Satânicos", logo esperava algo pesado, sufocante. Que surpresa! E como a censura é sempre tão burra. Livro gostoso e muito agradável.

Maybe 3.5? I really enjoyed the first two thirds, set in pre-independence Cochin and Bombay, with local and national politics masterfully woven into the family saga. The final part (the 90’s) dragged on a bit for me… But fun to read after a trip to Granada, with all its clever references to Moorish Spain.

"Moje prawdziwe dziedzictwo to furia!" Salman Rushdie.
Tak, jest to saga rodzinna. Tak, to jest realizm magiczny. Ale zdaje mi się, że dystans autora do tego co pisze jest tutaj większy, niż w przypadku gatunkowych krewniaków z Ameryki Południowej. Jest tu też więcej zabawy z biednym czytelnikiem, odważniejsze robienie go w konia i ogólnie o wiele większe zakręcenie. Tak, ta książka tętni życiem, kolorami, zapachami, muzyką i szaleństwem. Tak, Indie! I tak, niesamowici, szurnięci, dzicy bohaterowie z krwi, kości i wszystkich możliwych, żywych tkanek. I tak: ponad 400 stron gęstego szaleństwa i przepięknej literatury. Nie da się nie kochać Salmana.

n  In the end, stories are what's left of us, we are no more than the few tales that persist. And in the best of the old yarns, the ones we ask for over'n'over, there's are lovers, it's true, but the parts we go for are the bits where shadows fall across the lover's path.n

Smart, scintillating and macabre in places, 'The Moor's Last Sigh' is a phenomenal piece of literature that leaves an indelible mark on the reader. I have always held Mr. Rushdie in high esteem as a writer, even before reading any of his books. I do confess that I've always found his books to be rather daunting and intimidating but that didn't deter me from picking up my first Rushdie book, though my apprehension did get the better of my excitement. The first sixty pages were a chore to read, which perhaps explains my four star rating. From there, it quickly picked up pace. Lucky for me, this book didn't disappoint. It stayed true to its critical acclaim.

Moraes 'Moor' Zogoiby, through whom we learn the history of the da Gama-Zogoiby household is the last surviving member of both the clans. It is through his eyes that we also see his mother Aurora da Gama's rise to fame as an artist and subsequent downfall; his father's growth into a business tycoon and his flawed morality. It doesn't end here. Moor also narrates his own life in which a disease, his lover, his parents, his mother's paintings, a fanatic 'cartoonist', a maniacal artist and most of all, old curses from the lips of dying ladies play a catalytic role. Parallels to the story of the 'Last Moor', Baobdil are strewn throughout the book. It uses Cochin, Mumbai and to some extent, Spain as the primary background with political undertones of Post-Independence India and everything ranging from Hindi talkies to underworld Mogambos and Scars orchestrating Moor's tragic tale.

n  I have been a hothouse plant, a soldier on a perpetual forced march, a traveller caught in a flesh-and-blood time machine, perpetually out of breath, because I've been running faster than the years, in spite of painful knees. n

What draws you to the characters is their seemingly despicable natures. None of them are your typical 'role models'. Some of them have a history tainted by blood, infidelities and undercover businesses. And if abstract ideas and things could don the masks of characters, then this book is filled with such examples. Paintings, to a large extent, as they set the mood of this haunting tale. And yet, Moor's own story is dictated by the characters around him.

Mr. Rushdie does everything perfectly. This book starts on the right note and ends on the right note, the story coming full circle. Yet, to appreciate the very idea of creating something as intriguing as this book needs certain merit, which I definitely lack. Pardon me, sir. At times, the catacomb of stories within stories this book offers is too much to handle in one sitting. And hence, I had to break it up into chunks my poor, confused brain could make sense of. I will , however, state one fact plainly. This book tends to get a bit too wordy occasionally. Don't believe me? I have proof. 180 words that I had no idea existed. Or maybe it was just my vocabulary that was lacking. And that crudely sums up why I gave this book a four-star rating. I was tossed into a hurricane of brilliantly used words whose deep meanings I could not fathom.

n  How to forgive the world for it's beauty, which merely disguises it's ugliness; for it's gentleness, which merely cloaks its cruelty; for its illusion of continuing, seamlessly, as the night follows the day, so to speak-whereas in reality life is a series of brutal ruptures, falling upon our defenceless heads like the blows of a woodsman's axe?n

The Moor’s Last Sigh was almost exactly what I expected it to be: a sprawling family drama written with vibrancy and pulsing with layers of foreign mysticism. However, something was missing. Yes, the characters were larger than life and uniquely distinct. Yes, there were magical undercurrents inhabiting almost every nook. Yes, there was exposure to culture in an in your face kind of way that effectively transplanted you. But somehow, despite all the trimmings and embellishments for greatness, something just wasn't right… and I suspect it had all to do with the plot.

I was bored too many times with this one. Bored not for lack of activity, but bored because the activity that was going on took on a plodding and methodical approach. The Moor begins his narration hinting at a personal trauma that invades his life, and the reader is left on anticipatory pins and needles as one awaits this in the lion’s den moment for the Moor. But before we get to that tragedy, we are taken on a journey into the detailed history of the day to day of his family’s ancestors, starting with a great grandmother and several emasculated uncles, then working its way down the genealogical tree to the Moor’s heralded birth. Usually I am on board for these kinds of narratives, for in families of a kooky caliber such as this, one is exposed to all manner of voodoo and intrigue, which always leads to a good read. However, I could not help but feel that in the process of describing everyone but himself, that the narrator felt more like a casual observer than an actual partaker for most of the novel. Though I was very into learning how this parent meant that parent, or how that relative beat up that relative, I still found myself wishing the Moor’s story would just start happening sooner.

For even though the last third of the novel does focus on him, there were still distractions that made even his ascent into manhood come across with a whimper. The focus felt always elsewhere, either on the politics of India as told by a gossip columnist, or on the unpredictable happenings of his steel-blooded and unlikable mother, Aurora. Once again not bad distractions should you need one, but I felt that the story of the Moor, who enters the world deformed of hand and with a form of progeria that laces him immediately with distinction and magic, was strong enough to stand on its own without the superfluous disturbances that took away from me really identifying with the Moor like I should have.

I feel ultimately unsure of why this one somewhat failed, because even mentioning the above seems like an exaggerated and nitpicky heresy of sorts. The writing at times was beautiful, as one would expect from Rushdie, but at times the writing also felt like muck that I had to maneuver through in order to get to the end. I hope over the course of my life to read more Rushdie, but somehow this one makes me want to hold off before I enter that desert of an experience again. Pound for pound, this was a well written book by a well-known author, but somehow it did not leave a taste in my mouth that I am yearning to experience again.

It's a long and rough read. As far as magic realism goes, it's not quite Midnight's Children - more just interesting, rather than compelling. Would still recommend giving it a try, but with checked expectations. 3,8/5

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 SIGH, the mojo is gone. That's a pity, as I was really looking forward to a chronicle of the fusion of cultures in South India, where I will soon be traveling. Rushdie certainly believes that the spicy blend of Christians, Jews, Hindus, Marxists, Portuguese, and Englishmen in places like Kochin is something special. At first, one is enthralled by this remarkable setting. However, that thrill quickly fades. Rushdie takes forever to introduce the life of the narrator and protagonist Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, choosing to dedicate the 150 pages to various events in the life of his great-grandparents, grandparents, or parents. While these are sometimes interesting, Rushdie doesn't give them any urgency and link them to a vaster plot, so this reader started to wonder where all this was going.

And writing this in the first person was a terrible mistake, because Moor is one of the most annoying narrators I've ever encountered. It's hard to get into the plot when it's being reported by the sort of smart aleck that, at parties, people do all they can to stand on the other side of the room from. And how many times does Moor have to make reference to the fragrance of spices? We get it, Kochin is a spice city, enough already. In the end, I bailed at about the point that the narrator is born.

After THE MOOR'S LAST SIGH, I'm not unsure whether I want to continue with Rushdie's output, or whether I should just treasure the works of the 1980s.

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 "work" or put it down because it was getting late and I needed to sleep. It was a sloooooow burn and my life allowed me the luxury of an agile routine. That was my introduction to THE Salman Rushdie..As of today, I've read everything he's written. It's a keeper. A re-reader.

Review of Shame and The Moor's Last Sigh

Reading Rushdie after reading 'ordinary' books, the language hits you like a tidal wave. It is exagerated, overblown, long-winded and wonderful in its depth, variety and decadence. Rushdie's work flourishes on his bright, in-your-face love of language and of story-telling, something so joyous that it in some way negates, or balances, the simple tragedy and violent folly of these dark, vicious tales. Placed either side of his magnificent but not exactly lovable Satanic Verses, both Shame and The Moor's Last Sigh provide magical, epic family dramas of a much more readable and accesible form.

These two very different forms of magical realism have much in common. Both follow the progress of rich and doomed families across generations (in Shame's case the friendships and frictions between two waring political families, in The Moor's Last Sigh a single, decadent merchant family and its slow fall into death and ruin) and both are written in a style that frequently crosses between reality and Rushdie's very flexible imagination. Both revel in words and wordplay, the magic of coincidence and the intrigue of tracing parallels and patterns through the generations, the magically repeating helix of narrative. Both offer a dark, hellish vision of their overlaying reality (Pakistan and Bombay) and both offer little in the way of happy endings or solutions.

Shame is more scattered than the more linear narrative of The Moor's Last Sigh. It follows a dizzying array of characters and jumps around in time and place. The first person narrator remains unidentified throughout, a sly, sarcastic and jokey commentator on the events and lives of Iskander Harappa and Raza Hyder, two powerful men in a fractured Pakistan, and their families. The most memorable story is that of Hyder's daughter, the Beast Sufiya Zinobia, a retarded girl with an anger locked inside her capable of terrible and cathartic acts. Her marriage to Omar Khayyam, a overweight doctor who has until then lived a pleasure seeking life, sparks the final events of the book and Sufiya's transformation. It is an extremely violent and exciting finale, almost in the tradition of a Hollywood fright movie, and it works as the build up and release of all the titular "shame" that has piled up on the characters throughout the novel.

Rushdie's very clever trick is the way he intentionally forgets Sufiya and her story. He is frequently sidetracked by other events and only returns sporadically to Sufiya, often with a question, and what about Sufiya Zinobia? For all their power and posturing, Iskander and Raza fade into the background of their own stories and their shame, manifested in the abused, captive Sufiya, rises slowly and inexorable as the novel nears its climax. The question comes thick and fast, what about Sufiya? so that we are constantly reminded and, despite the lack of screen time, when Shame reaches its close, it is her story we remember.

Like a lot of Rushdie's work, fairytales, both east and west, abound and interlace his stories. Shame's obvious reference is Beauty and the Beast, but The Moor's Last Sigh is patchworked with them so completely that it becomes a bit of a treasure hunt of cultural references, from the old and traditional to modern cinema. There's the Snow Queen (eventual fairytale villian Miranda's needle in the heart), Rumpelstiltskin (Abraham's deal with his mother), lots of references to the Wizard of Oz (the female characters as witch figures, a gangster Tin Man) the Godfather (Abraham the criminal overlord) towers to be locked in, curses and family dooms. It's fascinating but at times a bit too much. Rushdie's obsession with tracking (and blaming) the entire geneology of the Moor's ancestors makes parts of the novel seem superfluous and long-winded.

But the truth is everything fits into a very epic whole - in some ways Moor's Last Sigh feels like Rushdie's most ambitious and most realised book. It weaves in centuries of history, linking the Moor's fate with his mirrored historical counterpart in al-Andalus, Moorish Spanish. There is the sub-surface tracing of the story through Aurora's paintings, described and analysed in detail, as well as a more contemporary vision of an almost steampunk Bombay full of gang warfare and maniacal murderers and political plotters. It also manages to be simultaneously his easiest plot to follow and the most ambiguous - by the end of the novel elements of the plot are left to the reader's discretion, in particular the true nature of his relationship with his mother and the manipulative love interest, Uma, both wonderfully secretive and intriguing characters. The finale brings the father-figure to the fore, together with the various suspect lovers of his mother, into a thrilling and cinematic apocalytic ending, probably the most exciting 100 pages of a Rushdie novel. His vision of violence and anger in urban Bombay comes together in a rip-roaring, explosive conclusion. Rushdie dares an extended epilogue - a trippy, almost David Lynch style ending in Andalusia with new witch characters and fairytale snares, where the madness and the violent heritage of the Zogoiby family comes to a more intimately tragic, disturbing end.

Interestingly, both of the main protagonists (Sufiya and the Moor) are out of step with time. Sufiya's mental age lags behind her body while the Moor ages at twice the normal pace. This allows for some very bizarre and sexually uncomfortable plots - particularly in the Moor's Last Sigh he treads a fine line and sometimes makes his strange clan of Zogoiby's a little too immoral, a little too taboo. In Shame it works better, Sufiya a very powerful representation of female repression and a fury waiting, needing, a release. The brick sillouette of Sufiya's escaped form, a Bertha in the attic let loose, is one of his finest and most thrilling images.

The depth of these novels is incredible and, while they have their flaws and Rushdie has a habit of getting sidetracked from the plot frequently, that does allow him the space and time to amplify his themes and flaunt his unparalleled manipulation of language. Every reader would no doubt reveal new word games and references to other stories. On a basic narrative level, Shame and the Moor's Last Sigh are two very readable, magical realism epics with two briliantly executed and even fun endings that makes all the dense wading through family histories and words upon words very much worth the effort. 8

O carte deosebită, tipul ce te introduce într-o lume cu totul nouă, în special pentru o româncă care a cunoscut India doar prin câteva pelicule și unele stereotipuri culturale. Un roman construit din amintiri și referințe livrești. Salman Rushdie este un scriitor extrem de talentat, iar educația și erudiția ce îi formează persoana reies din multiplele coordonate ce deschid volumul în zeci de direcții de interpretare.