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 militant Hindu nationalist movement, the Shiv Sena, through his fictional character Raman Fielding. This critical...
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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 14 December 2025.]
