Salman Rushdie: Handcuffed to History

Abstract

Author of novels, essays, travelogues, screenplays, martyr for free speech, and champion of the narrative as a political statement, Rushdie has not only earned recognition as an artist during his lifetime but is also perhaps the most well-known novelist of the late 20th century due to his literary accomplishments and the controversy that has surrounded them. Similar to Marquez in Spanish, Rushdie has created a new genre by fictionalizing history as his topic. Over the course of his nearly 30-year career, he has won nearly every prize and established himself as the epitome of the romantic writer: scabrous, shrewd, and knowledgeable, he is equally at ease among pop culture purveyors and the learned judges of literary taste. In the process of immersing his readers in a magical realist dreamscape and fairytale where the conventional is bravely and wittily questioned, he has attacked official historical truth, levelled vicious criticism at petty nationalism, and censored state media. The T narrating is essentially an essayist, Rushdie's literary default setting, and as such, his narrators are untrustworthy and invasive.