Fiction after the Fatwa: Salman Rushdie and the Charm of Catastrophe proposes for the first time an examination of what Rushdie has achieved as a writer since the fourteenth of February 1989, the date of the fatwa. This study argues that his constant questioning of fictional form and the language used to articulate it have opened up new opportunities and further possibilities for writing in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Through close readings and intensive textual analysis, arranged chronologically, Fiction after the Fatwa provides a thought-provoking reflection on the writer's achievements over the last thirteen years. Aimed principally at academics and students, but also of interest to the general reader, it engages with the specific nature of the post-fatwa fiction as it moves from the fairy-tale world of Haroun and the Sea of Stories to the heartbreaking post-realism of Fury.
Contents:
1. Fiction after the Fatwa
2. Haroun and the Sea of Stories: "The Uses of Enchantment"
3. East, West: The Dislocation of Culture
4. The Moor's Last Sigh: Escaping Identity, Marginal Alternatives, The Inferno of Language
5. The Ground Beneath Her Feet: Postmodern Baroque, Reflections on Truth
6. Fury: Devoured by Pop
7. Afterword: The Charm of Catastrophe
8. Appendix: Plot Summaries
9. Select Bibliography
10. Index
Contents:
1. Fiction after the Fatwa
2. Haroun and the Sea of Stories: "The Uses of Enchantment"
3. East, West: The Dislocation of Culture
4. The Moor's Last Sigh: Escaping Identity, Marginal Alternatives, The Inferno of Language
5. The Ground Beneath Her Feet: Postmodern Baroque, Reflections on Truth
6. Fury: Devoured by Pop
7. Afterword: The Charm of Catastrophe
8. Appendix: Plot Summaries
9. Select Bibliography
10. Index