St Ursula Academy Seniors, College Prep Summer 2008 Reading

Reading casually or reading an abridgement such as Cliff’s Notes or Spark Notes
will not prepare you for a test or class discussion.

Haroun and The Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie
Enjoy this fantastic fairy tale about a young boy’s quest to save the world’s stories.  But also keep an eye towards issues of censorship, government, family, and the importance of language and storytelling.

Special Instructions:  Before you read the novel, read the author’s biography below.  To prepare for the test, take careful notes as you read.  Focus on plot, characterization, themes, and language.

Assignment:  There will be a reading test on the work during the first week of school.The author’s biographical information will be on the test.

Reprinted from CNN Interactive

Salman Rushdie (1947-)

Anglo-Indian novelist, who connects in his works tales from various genres - fantasy, mythology, religion, oral tradition.  As a writer Rushdie has been described as a magic realist like such English-language authors as Peter Carey, Angela Carter, E.L. Doctorow, John Fowles, Mark Helprin or Emma Tennant. - Salman Rushdie was condemned to death by the former Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on February 14,1989, after publishing SATANIC VERSES.

Rushdie was bom in Bombay, India, to an middle-class Moslem family.  His paternal grandfather was an Urdu poet, and his father a Carnbridge-educated businessman.  At the age of fourteen Rushdie was sent to Rugby School in England.  In 1964 Rushdie's parents moved to Karachi, Pakistan, joining reluctantly the Muslim exodus - during these years there was a war between India and Pakistan, and the choosing-of sides and divided loyalties burdened Rushdie heavily.

Rushdie continued his studies at King's College, Cambridge, where he read history.  After graduating in 1968 he worked for a time in television in Pakistan and as an actor at a theatre group at Oval House in Kennington.  From 1971 to 1981 Rushdie earned his living by working intermittently as a freelance advertising copywriter for Ogilvy and Mather and Charles Barker.

As a novelist Rushdie made his debut with GRIMUS in 1975, an exercise in fantastical science fiction, which draws on the 12th-century Sufi poem The Conference of Birds . The title of the novel is an anagram of the name 'Simurg', the immense, all-wise, fabled bird of pre-Islamic Persian mythology.  Rushdie's the next novel, MIIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN (198 1), won the Booker Prize and brought him international fame.  It is a comic allegory of Indian history which revolves around the lives of narrator Saleem Sinai and the 1,000 children born after the Declaration of Independence.  Sinai, dying in a pickle factory near Bombay, tells his tragic story with special interest on its comical sides.  The work was banned in India because its unflattering portrait of Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay, who was involved in a controversial sterilization campaign.

SHAME (1983) centered on a well-to-do Pakistani family, using the family history as a metaphor for the country.  HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES (1990) was written for children. and weaved in the story an affable robot. genies, talking fish, dark villains, and an Arabian princess in need of saving.

Rushdie won in 1988 the Whitebread Award with his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses . The novel was banned in India and South Africa and burned on the streets of Bradford, Yorkshire.  When Ayatollah Khomeini called on all zealous Muslims to execute the writer and the publishers of the book, Rushdie was forced into hiding.  Also an aide to Khomeini offered a million-dollar reward for Rushdie's death.  In 1993 Rushdie's Norwegian publisher William Nygaard was wounded in an attack outside his house.  In 1997 the prize was doubled, and in 1998 the highest Iranian state prosecutor Morteza Moqtadale renewed the death sentence. During the years of the fatwa, violent protest in India, Pakistan, and Egypt have caused several deaths.

In 1990 Rushdie published an essay In Good Faith to appease his critics and issued an apology in which he reaffirmed his respect for Islam.  However, Iranian clerics did not repudiate their death threat.  THE MOORS LAST SIGHT (1995) focused on contemporary India, and explored the activities of right-wing, Hindu terrorist, directed at Indian Muslims and lower castes.  THE GROUND BENEATH HER FEET (1999) was set in the world of hedonistic rock stars, mixing in the story mythology and elements from the repertoire of science fiction.

Since the religious decree, Rushdie lived outside publicity, hiding from assassins, but he has continued to write and publish books.  He has been married twice, in 1976 to Clarissa Luard and in 1988 to the American writer Marianne Wiggins.  The marriage broke up during their enforced underground life.  However, on September 1998 Iranian government announced that the state is not going to put into effect the fatwa or encourage anybody to do so.  According to interviews, Rushdie has decided to end his hiding.  On February 1999 Ayatollah Hassan Sanei promised 2.8 million dollar reward for killing the author.

The Satanic Verses starts when a hijacked jumbo-jet blows apart above English Channel.  Gibreel Farishta, a movie star, and Saladin Charncha, Londoner, of a thousand voices, are miraculously saved, and chosen as protagonist in fight between Good and Evil.  In the following cycle of bizarre adventures, dreams, and tales of past and future, reader meets Mahound, the Prophet of Jahilia, the recipient of a revelation in which satanic verses mingle with divine.  The character modelled on the Prophet Muhammad and his transcription of the Quran is portrayed in an unconventional light. The quotations from the Quran are composites of the English version of N.J. Dawood and of Maulana Muhammad Ati, with a few touches of Rushdie's own.

For further reading: Critical Essays on Salman Rushdie, ed. by M. Keith Booker (1999); An Attempt to Understand the Muslim Reaction to the Satanic Verses by Victoria Laporte (1999)-, Salman Rushdie by D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke

Rushdie wouldn't rewrite history

But ten years after the "Satanic Verses" was released, Rushdie said he had no regrets about writing the novel.
 

"I'm content with the book I wrote and I hope it can now take its proper place on the bookshelf and be simply read and studied so that people can make up their own minds," said the Indian-bom writer.

He complains: "It's been discussed in every context except in the language of literature."

The publication of the "Satanic Verses" and Khomeini's 1989 fatwa prompted protests and riots by Muslims in Pakistan, India and Turkey, who believed Rushdie had insulted a holy figure.
 

In the ensuing decade, the book's Japanese translator was killed, and its Norwegian publisher and Italian translator seriously injured in separate attacks.

The publishing firm Penguin received 5,000 abusive or threatening letters in the year after the fatwa and 25 bomb threats.

Rushdie was forced into hiding, living with round-the-clock police protection and moving constantly from safe house to safe house accompanied by armed bodyguards.

"I've tried to live without fear.  Fear paralyzes you.  I've tried to get on with my life." said Rushdie.

Although Iran sought to distance itself from the fatwa last year, some Iranians still seek Rushdie's life.  An Iranian foundation has placed a $2.8 million bounty on Rushdie's head.

"The reality is that nothing has changed," said a police officer from Britain's Special Branch after Iran officially eased the threat.  "Rushdie is still being protected at the same level as before and, given the level of danger, that is right."

But over the years, he has gradually emerged from his twilight world, appearing at literary gatherings, even attending theater premieres.

Reprinted from CNN Interactive