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Lead book review

Has Salman Rushdie become his own pastiche?

Salman Rushdie returns to India with a full-throated mix of history, magic realism and dazzling storytelling, says James Walton

4 February 2023

9:00 AM

4 February 2023

9:00 AM

Victory City Salman Rushdie

Jonathan Cape, pp.352, 22

If there were ever a Spectator competition for the best pastiche of the opening words of a Salman Rushdie novel, a pretty good entry might be: ‘On the last day of her life, when she was two hundred and forty-seven years old, the blind poet, miracle worker and prophetess Pampa Kampana completed her immense narrative poem about Bisnaga.’

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