last August, abandons the modern age and idiom entirely, starting the clock in 14th-century India, where a young girl, possessed and empowered by a god, will found a city and shepherd it into an empire.
After a minor conflict between two kingdoms in Hindustan , the women of the vanquished kingdom follow their husbands into death by marching into a bonfire. A 9-year-old girl named Pampa Kampana watches, and for the rest of her life “would carry the scent of her mother’s burning flesh in her nostrils.”
Into the void of Pampa’s grief steps the goddess Parvati, who, speaking through Pampa’s own mouth, tells her that “in this exact place a great city will rise, the wonder of the world, and its empire will last for more than two centuries. And you … will see it all and tell its story.” The goddess adds that in this new empire, women are no longer to be treated like chattel. As a king will tell her later, Pampa’s ideas are “a little ahead of your time.
What happens from here is less of a plot and more a progression of history, all witnessed and influenced by Pampa, who carries the curse of long life . She is Bisnaga’s first and second queen, then twice exiled and returned. Palace intrigues roil as the borders of the empire expand and contract under subsequent monarchs: some conquerors, others managers, and some religious zealots. Royal succession is complicated by Pampa’s children.
of great cities and societies. The urge to understand ourselves in sacred terms developed not from the invention of history, but alongside it. It’s as if Rushdie has dropped a molecule of divinity into a petri dish containing the other basic stuff of life, and watched a civilization cultivate.
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