Features
Two brilliant writers – Booker Prize winners
Salman Rushdie (age 75) is back on the world literary stage and welcomed strongly by other novelists and writers in general. His new book, handed over to his publisher –
The government of Iran denied knowing about the stabbing though state media celebrated it. Never to be forgotten is the fatwa declared by the then Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini with a promised bounty of $3 million for Rushdie’s death soon after he published The Satanic Verses in 1988. Die hard Muslims thought it blasphemous of Prophet Mohammed. Rushdie went into hiding in Britain, protected by British security forces for almost a decade. He then shifted to New York. He was knighted in 2007.
The 2022 attack shocked the world and shook writers. He had been revered as a free speech icon and in spite of the fatwa (rescinded in 1998) he continued to write and speak against intolerance. After the grievous attack last summer, fellow writers and cultural figures expressed outrage and gathered for vigils in his honor, sharing personal stories about him and reading from his novels. One of these I read about was on the steps of the New York Library with Kiran Desai joining many others. Chief Executive of PEN America, Suzanne Nossal commented: “They failed to silence him.”
New Book
Titled Victory City, Rushdie’s recent novel is about a gifted storyteller and poet named Pampa Kampana who creates a new civilization through her imagination. Blessed by a goddess, she lives nearly 240 years, long enough to witness the rise and fall of her empire in southern India – Vijayanagar – which translates to Victory City. Her lasting legacy is an epic poem. She writes a message at the end of her epic which she buries in a pot as a message for future generations: “All that remains is this city of words. Words are the only victors.” So true for the present and particularly in the author’s case where he was nearly killed twice; his books are read and re-read and his new book eagerly awaited and commented on, even pre-publication.
One comment: “Framed as the text of a rediscovered medieval Sanskrit epic, Victory City is about myth making, story-telling and the enduring power of language.” Novelist Colum McCann writes: “He is saying something quite profound in Victory City. He’s saying ‘you will never take the fundamental act of storytelling away from people’. In the face of danger, even in the face of death, he manages to say that storytelling is one currency we all have.”
Margaret Atwood at a panel discussion on the novel said she felt an obligation to speak about Rushdie’s latest work, given that he was not able to appear publicly himself, as reported by Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A Harris in the January 25 New York Times. “You have to, as it were, foil the attempt to shut him down. He’s been through so much, being in hiding for all those years, feeling under threat.” The article I quote from is titled: Victory City in which a gifted story teller and poet created a new civilization through the sheer power of her imagination. The two reviewers indicate that in the novel Rushdie seems to be saying: “I will use this mighty weapon of language which is stronger than anything you can throw at me.” They also comment on his nature – funny, quick-witted, extraordinarily resilient. “It is hoped Victory City would shift attention back to Rushdie’s fiction – a novelist more than free speech advocate or a victim of malicious assault.” They classify Victory City as a joyful, oversize romp of a book, an extravagant book wherein his full creative capabilities are shown. “He is a story teller and novelist more than a political symbol.”
I admit Rushdie is not easy to read. I attempted many times to get into Midnight’s Children (1981) but failed until I saw the Deepa Mehta directed 2012 film which clearly depicted the plot of two infant boys being exchanged in a maternity ward by a nurse on malicious instructions given her on the night of Partition when Pakistan was created and India gained independence from the British Raj. The boys are from a rich Hindu mother and Muslim roadside singer. Their fortunes are traced magically through terrible vicissitudes against the backdrop of Hindu- Muslim racial tensions and rich against poor. This, Rushdie’s second novel, shot him to fame and won him the Booker Prize.
Then came the fateful Satanic Verses with its satirical depictions of Prophet Muhammad in 1988. The Moor’s Last Sigh followed in 1995 “which traced the downward spiral of expectations experienced by India as post-independence hopes for democracy crumbled during the emergency rule declared by PM Indira Gandhi in 1975.” Fury was out in 2001, after the author’s move to the US. It traces a doll maker’s arrival in New York leaving his wife and child in London. A Times reviewer said “Although Rushdie inhabits his novels in all manner of guises and transformations, he had never been so literally present as in this one.” His one but the last novel Joseph Anton (2012) is a memoir narrating his experiences after the fatwa was issued. The title is the name Rushdie assumed while in hiding, a combination of the names of two of his favourite authors: Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekov. It gives glimpses of his childhood – an alcoholic father and Rushdie’s s marriages. He has been much married! Clarissa Luard 1976-87; Marrianne Wiggins 1888-93; Elizabeth West 1999-2004 and Padma Lakshmi – Latin American actress, model and TV host from 2004 to 2007; having met her in 1999.
Now, with the release of Victory City, writers are again rallying around Rushdie to champion his work. Many see it as a moment to celebrate Rushdie’s exuberant and playful imagination, to turn attention back to his fiction. Some say the book’s “overarching message — that stories will outlast political clashes, wars, the collapse of empires and civilizations” — has taken on a heightened resonance in light of what Rushdie has endured.
One cannot help but mourn the deaths of our own writers who championed honesty and free speech. No closure to most of those instigated assassinations. Lasantha Wickrematunge’s in particular.
Chat with Shehan Karunatilaka Ashok Ferrey
asked a couple of questions from Shehan Karunatilaka and commented on his work with the venue –library of the British Council in Kollupitiya – filled to capacity by invitees and guests who paid for admission.
It is opportune that I write about Salman Rushdie and Shehan K in the same article as they are both Booker Prize winners and thus equal in honour and consideration as novelists. India boasts ten Booker short listed of whom six were winners: V S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Arundathi Roy, Kiran Desai, Arvind Adigar and Gitanjali Shree who won the International Booker awarded to a non-English and translated novel. Tiny Sri Lanka boasts three short listed – Anuk Arulpragasam in 2021; and two of them who won the coveted, very competitive prize: Shehan K and Michael Ondaatji. Ondaataji is Canadian but makes it a point to add Sri Lanka to his country origin.
The entire conversation was absorbingly interesting and made light and easy by the two on stage. Shehan noted that plot is easy in novel writing; it is style, voice, choice of language and building up characters that needed concentration and working on. He condensed 40 years of civil war and the turmoil of the late 1980s which was really the tip of the iceberg. A criticism, mentioned by Ashok, that the Seven Moons of Maali Almeida conveys a rather ugly picture of the country and its people, and shows Sri Lanka in a very negative light, had Shehan reply with a chuckle that he was not writing a touristy novel, far from it. He said tourism would not be adversely affected by his descriptions; and for history, his book should not be read. However, his fiction is heavily coloured by fact. He mentioned here the success of the film series The Crown which he watched avidly. He said the protagonist Maali Almeida was not at all him, not even completely Richard de Zoysa on whom he based his character. Maali was a photographer and gambler which Richard was not.
He chose to write about ghosts and the underworld since it was a niche not written much about. He did much research, spoke to people and of course edited heavily as the novel was first published as Chats with the Dead but was revised heavily. He acknowledged the debt he owed Natalia Jansz who suggested improvements and changes, and her husband Mark Ellingham who published his book. He magnanimously said that much of the honour of winning was due to her painstaking and scrupulous editing. For example as suggested by her, he spent much time defining the four minor characters in the book – the van driver and garbage collector included.
He admitted to having a sixth sense in his proven-to-be-successful choice of subject and plot. One was choice of a ‘ghost story’ and in the earlier novel – cricket. He was surprised that though Sri Lankans are crazy about cricket, no novel centered the game.Hence his plot and character development in Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, which won him awards and international fame.
Black humour was hugely present in his novel, pointed Ashok. Shehan admitted it was deliberate, specially its lack of lightness as writing about the dead and where they go to is black. He added that humour and enjoyment of fun are Sri Lankan characteristics.
He added “I enjoy writing. Research is good. Plotting, character building and rewriting consequent to suggested edits is painstaking. When you start writing you don’t think about sales, targets etc. But you have in mind the imperative that you write a book that appeals, more especially when it’s a novel. “
A personal note here. I found it, like others, difficult to go through Shehan’s book easily. That is a deficit of mine. Seven Moons… is truly multifaceted carrying significance and symbolism, so it is a great book. After all it won the world’s most prestigious literary prize in English, now having to compete with vast numbers of American writers. It and Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children are on par. Our own Shehan Karunatilake is up there among the world’s greatest literary fiction writers in the English language. We appreciatively thank him for bringing honour to this country; and to Ashok Ferrey – Gratiaen Prize winner for 2022 – for making the evening of literary appreciation at the British Council a super event.
Again I end with the thought that haunts many a Sri Lankan, the planned merciless killing of Richard de Zoysa just because, it is surmised, he wrote a play parodying a sentence used to characterize the leader of then. And also of Rajini Thiranagama, mercilessly shot from behind by a Tamil Tiger. These are just two innocents who lost their lives at the whim of the Lankan govt heads, LTTE and JVP terrorists. But the comfort is that their written words lives on. They must never be forgotten.