Word: apsaras
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Dates: during 1999-1999
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...primarily in America, though the main characters are Indian and a good chunk of the book takes place there. The first third of the book is a dense, atmospheric and compelling look at India during the beginning of British decolonization. The novel's featured three-some, beautiful Vina Apsara, musically gifted Ormus Cama and the narrator, Rai, are united early through friendships and tragedy. Vina, relocated to India from America after the murder of her family is adopted by Rai's parents, the Merchants. Soon, Vina meets Ormus Cama, the son of the Merchants' good friends; the three begin...
...story of Orpheus and Eurydice, this time casting the principals as international pop/rock stars? Ergo Salman Rushdie's sixth novel, The Ground Beneath Her Feet (Henry Holt; 575 pages; $27.50), which recounts the fabulous lives and careers of the singer-composer Ormus Cama and his beloved co-vocalist Vina Apsara, as remembered by their mutual friend, the news photographer Umeed ("Rai") Merchant. His opening sentence foretells Vina's death--she was swallowed up by an earthquake in Mexico in 1989--and Rai presents himself as a narrator with a mission: "I have chosen to tell our story, hers and mine...
...days (or 1,001 nights) before anyone else in the world. Ormus has a problem receiving the lyrics ("The ganja, my friend, is growing in the tin; the ganja is growing in the tin"), but no one doubts that he possesses a peculiar gift, least of all Vina Apsara, who meets Ormus in a record store and realizes that the two of them will make beautiful music together. Rai explains: "For she is--will be--Dionysiac, divine, and so is--so will...
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