Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

Vassilena Parashkevova (University of Surrey)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1995

Places

India (Country of Origin)
United Kingdom (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Published six years into the fatwa provoked by his satire on exclusivist fictions of Islam in

The Satanic Verses

(1988),

The Moor’s Last Sigh

remains Rushdie’s darkest novel, marked most prominently by the theme of captivity, but also one which displays his extraordinary intellectual vivacity, attempting nothing less than a sweeping revisionist historical novel that uses satire, allegory and literary allusion to create a kind of fresco of Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Hindu relations in twentieth-century India. Perhaps in an attempt to balance his critique, since

Shame

(1983) satirised the political elites of Pakistan, and

The Satanic Verses

the Mullah’s in Iran, in this novel Rushdie turns his satirical gaze on Hindu fundamentalism, caricaturing Bal Thackeray, the head of the…

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3121 words

Citation: Parashkevova, Vassilena. "The Moor's Last Sigh". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 08 May 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=129, accessed 20 April 2024.]

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