'Victory City' is the first book Rushdie has published since he was severely injured in a stabbing attack at a lecture in New York last August.
is an ongoing series of recommendations for timely books to read, films to watch and podcasts and music to listen to.Salman Rushdie's protagonist in his new novel"Victory City" — a fictional retelling of the fallen Indian empire of Vijayanagar — lives to be 247 years old and buries 24,000 of her verses on the history of the city, works that would be discovered centuries later.
Years later, two boys, Hakka and Bukka , seek wisdom from a monk who has taken in the young, grieving Pampa Kampana. She instructs them to sow the seeds they have brought as a gift, which she imbues with the power to sprout a progressive, harmonious city with religious and sexual freedom, where the arts can flourish and where women are safe.
"Victory City" is a reimagining of the rise and fall of a 14th-century empire that reigned over the south of India. It's Salman Rushdie's first novel since a stabbing attack left him severely injured."We know how it ends — it's a ruin on the banks of the river," said the Booker Prize-winning author Kiran Desai, who read"Victory City" before its release.
"There's this extremely emotional idea of Mother India in reuniting, in the end all of her warring offspring, and being the unifying force," Desai said."So here, again, you have this mother figure who was just doing her best."