Victory City

Everything that has made Rushdie such a significant author for the last 40-plus years is on show in Victory City, his 15th novel. It is a fabulous display of showmanship. An anonymous yet unreliable narrator depicts an Indian dynasty from its creation to destruction, spanning almost 250 years. Victory City invokes real-world events in India but is then imbued with Rushdie's trademark magic realism. As the narrator states midway through the novel, ‘The miraculous and the everyday are two halves of a single whole’. Victory City works because of its deftness of touch and inherent playfulness. All of life and death, love and hate are on display in the novel. Ultimately, Rushdie's endeavour (admittedly like that of so many other authors) is to ask what it is to be human and lead a life. Given the pace of the action, these more philosophical considerations never assume centre stage. By Rushdie standards, this is a short work too, at 370 pages. While Victory City would be a worthy candidate for top 10 reads in 2024, it is worth acknowledging the debt Rushdie owes to García Márquez. Neither this work nor Midnight's Children would have the structure it does were it not for One Hundred Years of Solitude. 10 out of 10.

By Salman Rushdie