Word: moor
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...MOOR'S LAST SIGH (Pantheon). Salman Rushdie's first novel since The Satanic Verses exuberantly details the protagonist's absurd fall from the grace of a wealthy Indian childhood into the hands of a madman who plans to kill him once the story ends--an interesting motif for this particular author. But the hero survives, and Rushdie's bountiful comic narrative triumphs...
...novel is set against a larger historical metaphor: the expulsion of the Moors from Muslim Spain in 1492. Thus, the Moor's last sigh belongs both to this earlier displaced people and to the narrator, Moraes Zogoiby, nicknamed 'The Moor'. The family spice business, nearly destroyed by the bitter squabbles of one generation, is rescued by the next and eventually transformed into a fantastic and far-reaching crime syndicate. Moraes is betrayed by a beautiful vixen, imprisoned, and then released on the condition that he go to work as a goon for his father's rival crime boss. Aurora Zogoiby...
...with Midnight's Children, Rushdie's second novel, The Moor's Last Sigh feels rather like magic realism, Indian style. There are curses and prophecies and general supernatural occurences, but these are offered with something that feels like scepticism: the magical may also be coincidental. This sophisticated, even jaded approach to the exotic, the "Oriental", is Rushdie's singular gift. The novel's narrator, Moraes, shares this detachment: "Christians, Portuguese and Jews; Chinese tiles promoting godless views; pushy ladies, skirts-not-saris, Spanish shenanigans, Moorish crowns...can this really be India...
...Moor's Last Sigh is a reaching, rickety palace of a narrative, sprawling in historical scope and capped everywhere with poetic minarets. The whole affair is held together by Rushdie's swift, lyrical, humorous style--or, mostly held together. The novel lacks the brilliant closure of Midnight's Children. Some avenues end artlessly, while others take too many twists. But the story never slows down long enough to get stuck. The crescendo, the penultimate action of the novel, is a manic and violent script worthy of John Woo direction...
...impossible to read Rushdie without reading into Rushdie, that is, without reading his work as a veiled response to the Ayatollah's threat. Certainly, The Moor's Last Sigh deals with flight and exile, but these themes have surfaced in the author's pre-fatwah work. Rushdie has always been something of an exile; as a British-educated Indian Muslim he must make his home by force of will...