Status
Available
Call number
Collections
Publication
New York : Random House, [2015]
Description
Fantasy. Fiction. Literature. Mythology. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER �?� NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post �?� Los Angeles Times �?� San Francisco Chronicle �?� Harper�??s Bazaar �?� St. Louis Post-Dispatch �?� The Guardian �?� The Kansas City Star �?� National Post �?� BookPage �?� Kirkus Reviews From Salman Rushdie, one of the great writers of our time, comes a spellbinding work of fiction that blends history, mythology, and a timeless love story. A lush, richly layered novel in which our world has been plunged into an age of unreason, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is a breathtaking achievement and an enduring testament to the power of storytelling. In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that resembles his own sub�??Stan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayor�??s office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils. A seductive gold digger is soon tapped to combat forces beyond imagining. Unbeknownst to them, they are all descended from the whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, who live in a world separated from ours by a veil. Centuries ago, Dunia, a princess of the jinn, fell in love with a mortal man of reason. Together they produced an astonishing number of children, unaware of their fantastical powers, who spread across generations in the human world. Once the line between worlds is breached on a grand scale, Dunia�??s children and others will play a role in an epic war between light and dark spanning a thousand and one nights�??or two years, eight months, and twenty-eight nights. It is a time of enormous upheaval, in which beliefs are challenged, words act like poison, silence is a disease, and a noise may contain a hidden curse. Inspired by the traditional �??wonder tales�?� of the East, Salman Rushdie�??s novel is a masterpiece about the age-old conflicts that remain in today�??s world. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights is satirical and bawdy, full of cunning and folly, rivalries and betrayals, kismet and karma, rapture and redemption. Praise for Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights �??Rushdie is our Scheherazade. . . . This book is a fantasy, a fairytale�??and a brilliant reflection of and serious meditation on the choices and agonies of our life in this world.�?��??Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian �??One of the major literary voices of our time . . . In reading this new book, one cannot escape the feeling that [Rushdie�??s] years of writing and success have perhaps been preparation for this moment, for the creation of this tremendously inventive and timely novel.�?��??San Francisco Chronicle �??A wicked bit of satire . . . [Rushdie] riffs and expands on the tales of Scheherazade, another storyteller whose spinning of yarns was a matter of life and death.�?��??USA Today �??A swirling tale of genies and geniuses [that] translates the bloody upheavals of our last few decades into the comic-book antics of warring jinn wielding bolts of fire, mystical transmutations and rhyming battle spells.�?��??The Washington Post �??Great fun . . . The novel shines brightest in the panache of… (more)
Media reviews
What's frustrating is to see glimpses of Rushdie's very real talent. Lines stand out, a wife who "slipped out of history" when her husband abandoned her, "he took it with him when he left," an "old town of salmon minarets and enigmatic walls," a "heart filled with something that might have been
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happiness, but poured out of his eyes as grief." But this is his second extremely bad book in a row — consult Zoë Heller's incineration of his memoir "Joseph Anton," for further detail — and it's beginning to seem as if that talent may be in permanent arrest. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member bluepigeon
I have read several Rushdie works by now, and the one that this book evoked most was the Enchantress of Florence, which means this needed some close editing and rearranging as well. As most of his work, storytelling is the prime mode of plot delivery and soon stories nestle into stories. Granted,
Rushdie is as whimsical and entertaining as ever, if you have the patience. I already mentioned that I think the beginning was poorly organized, or rather the choice of where to start (with whose story to start) was poorly made. So it takes a while to get into it, to feel invested in at least one character. The women remain rather simplistic, Saca boiled down to hatred and Dunia to her hot desire to please her father all her life, while the make characters are more complex and engaging. Even the dark ifrits are more interesting than Dunia. Though Rushdie likes to use the classic tools of storytelling, like repetition, quite often, I thought some things were a bit too much and could be edited out. Some descriptions of what happens when a jinni does this or that, how they fly on urns, or how much they like to have sex are repeated countless times, so many times that you wonder if Rushdie trusts the reader at all to remember anything from the beginning of his tale.
The myths and legends from many centuries are well worked into the plot, which I thought would make me keep reading, but in the end, when I look back, the parts I liked the best were the story of the Bagdad (without the h!) and Blue Yasmeen and the landlady, the Lady Philosopher (and the useless butler), Jimmy and his cousin "Normal," and of course, the story of immigrant Geronimo (his religious preacher of a father, his gay architect uncle...) Without these, the story is bland, despite the supernatural and seemingly exciting events. It is a pity that the same depth and interest does not exist for the two philosophers as men, as humans, because the whole book exists on the premise of their philosophical argument (god vs. reason).
I liked Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights better than the Enchantress of Florence, mainly because it was less messy and more focused, if one can ever say that about Rushdie's work.
Not recommended as the first book to introduce any reader to Rushdie (Midnight Children, Harun, or Luka are probably best for this purpose!) Recommended for those who like philosophy, mythology, and fantasy.
Many thanks to Library Thing and Random House for a copy of the book for my honest review.
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Rushdie keeps a tighter reign on his stories in this book inspired by the Thousand and One Nights than he did in the Enchantress, and that s a very very good thing! Still, to begin the story in the 12th century was not the best strategy, as I found myself caring more for Geronimo and Jimmy than for Dunia or the philosophers. Sure, the whole story, all millennium of it, is there to serve the purpose of the philosophical arguments for and against God and reason (Rushdie seems to be on the camp that believes that reason is the way to go and there isn't much room for compromise) and at times I felt like reading a heavily allegorical work. Especially the jinniri who are sent to the lower world to put the fear of God in humans by blowing up things... Hmmm, sounds familiar... So this is part literary revenge for the fatwa years (and who can blame him?) and part a long argument about why and how reason should rule religious belief, all with supernatural creatures banging about in the human world.Rushdie is as whimsical and entertaining as ever, if you have the patience. I already mentioned that I think the beginning was poorly organized, or rather the choice of where to start (with whose story to start) was poorly made. So it takes a while to get into it, to feel invested in at least one character. The women remain rather simplistic, Saca boiled down to hatred and Dunia to her hot desire to please her father all her life, while the make characters are more complex and engaging. Even the dark ifrits are more interesting than Dunia. Though Rushdie likes to use the classic tools of storytelling, like repetition, quite often, I thought some things were a bit too much and could be edited out. Some descriptions of what happens when a jinni does this or that, how they fly on urns, or how much they like to have sex are repeated countless times, so many times that you wonder if Rushdie trusts the reader at all to remember anything from the beginning of his tale.
The myths and legends from many centuries are well worked into the plot, which I thought would make me keep reading, but in the end, when I look back, the parts I liked the best were the story of the Bagdad (without the h!) and Blue Yasmeen and the landlady, the Lady Philosopher (and the useless butler), Jimmy and his cousin "Normal," and of course, the story of immigrant Geronimo (his religious preacher of a father, his gay architect uncle...) Without these, the story is bland, despite the supernatural and seemingly exciting events. It is a pity that the same depth and interest does not exist for the two philosophers as men, as humans, because the whole book exists on the premise of their philosophical argument (god vs. reason).
I liked Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights better than the Enchantress of Florence, mainly because it was less messy and more focused, if one can ever say that about Rushdie's work.
Not recommended as the first book to introduce any reader to Rushdie (Midnight Children, Harun, or Luka are probably best for this purpose!) Recommended for those who like philosophy, mythology, and fantasy.
Many thanks to Library Thing and Random House for a copy of the book for my honest review.
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LibraryThing member A_Reader_of_Fictions
Pages read: 15
TBH this book reads like a text book had sex with the Bible. O_O
TBH this book reads like a text book had sex with the Bible. O_O
LibraryThing member AnnieMod
It's a chronicle of a war that was lead 1000 years ago. It is a love story. It is a chronicle of our times. It is the story of the last time when the Fairy world touched ours. It is a story about language and stories. It is a story about the war between faith and reason. It is a story about
Rushdie's narrator lives 1000 years in the future although we do not know that from the beginning. Neither we know that it is a war story. Rushdie weaves the tale slowly, the same way as Scheherazade waved hers (and in case the title does not point to the direct connection, the title when calculated in nights is actually 1001 nights - a number that turns out to be of importance in the world of myth... which may just be our world).
The story opens 800 years in our past to show us the love story that starts it all and that leads to humanity changing and being able to tell the story so many centuries later. A jinnia (a female jinn) falls in love (despite her kind not usually being able to fall in love) and marries a philosopher. A brood of children follow and then the man abandons her - and then after she returns back to her own realm, the doors between the worlds are closed. Until our time.
A freaky storm brings an age of strangenesses. A time in which people with lobeless ears seem to start getting weird powers and the laws of physics seems to start bending and changing. A baby that is better than any lie-detector in the world; a comics writer that ends up with the powers of his invented character, a gardener that walks on air (and cannot switch it off so it becomes troublesome), a woman that can throw thunderbolts from her hands and so on and so on. The fantastical seems to be bleeding into the reality and the boundary flickers and changes. And then the dark jinns, the great Ifrits decide to come to Earth. And our Princess Dunia (for the jinnia that started all this turns out to be a powerful princess) needs to start a war. Add a pair of dead philosophers (one of them the one that started all that all those centuries before) and things start to take shape.
Rushdie never uses real names for places and countries (except for the ones that are needed for the story like Spain and New York) but it is not hard to recognize which lands are hiding under the initials; neither it is hard to see the nowadays events being recasted and reexplained in the reality of that world. It is as much a story of our world as it is of the imaginary one created from the author; the war on terrorism and the war that Dunia leads are the same - as are the actions of everyone involved. It is a contemporary novel wrapped into the fantastic; a legend showing the reality we all live in. The great literature of the world and the myths of the East are used to add another dimension to the story. And by the end of the novel you still remember places and phrases and sentences that opened a door to another place and time and makes you want to read more - both from the novel and from the works it uses for references or in passing.
It a marvelous novel - a Chinese box of stories inside stories that never end and just give birth to new stories. It's a novel that will hold different message to every reader - based on what they had read and learned - and that has the ability to shift and change and add new meanings when you concentrate on different parts.
Highly recommended!
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humanity. It is none of these and it is all of them. Rushdie's narrator lives 1000 years in the future although we do not know that from the beginning. Neither we know that it is a war story. Rushdie weaves the tale slowly, the same way as Scheherazade waved hers (and in case the title does not point to the direct connection, the title when calculated in nights is actually 1001 nights - a number that turns out to be of importance in the world of myth... which may just be our world).
The story opens 800 years in our past to show us the love story that starts it all and that leads to humanity changing and being able to tell the story so many centuries later. A jinnia (a female jinn) falls in love (despite her kind not usually being able to fall in love) and marries a philosopher. A brood of children follow and then the man abandons her - and then after she returns back to her own realm, the doors between the worlds are closed. Until our time.
A freaky storm brings an age of strangenesses. A time in which people with lobeless ears seem to start getting weird powers and the laws of physics seems to start bending and changing. A baby that is better than any lie-detector in the world; a comics writer that ends up with the powers of his invented character, a gardener that walks on air (and cannot switch it off so it becomes troublesome), a woman that can throw thunderbolts from her hands and so on and so on. The fantastical seems to be bleeding into the reality and the boundary flickers and changes. And then the dark jinns, the great Ifrits decide to come to Earth. And our Princess Dunia (for the jinnia that started all this turns out to be a powerful princess) needs to start a war. Add a pair of dead philosophers (one of them the one that started all that all those centuries before) and things start to take shape.
Rushdie never uses real names for places and countries (except for the ones that are needed for the story like Spain and New York) but it is not hard to recognize which lands are hiding under the initials; neither it is hard to see the nowadays events being recasted and reexplained in the reality of that world. It is as much a story of our world as it is of the imaginary one created from the author; the war on terrorism and the war that Dunia leads are the same - as are the actions of everyone involved. It is a contemporary novel wrapped into the fantastic; a legend showing the reality we all live in. The great literature of the world and the myths of the East are used to add another dimension to the story. And by the end of the novel you still remember places and phrases and sentences that opened a door to another place and time and makes you want to read more - both from the novel and from the works it uses for references or in passing.
It a marvelous novel - a Chinese box of stories inside stories that never end and just give birth to new stories. It's a novel that will hold different message to every reader - based on what they had read and learned - and that has the ability to shift and change and add new meanings when you concentrate on different parts.
Highly recommended!
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LibraryThing member gendeg
You can’t read a books column these days without stumbling on articles about the “genre wars” or reading about a literary or mainstream writer poking around the genre stable. The blurring of genre categories has started to gain momentum, much to my elation, with writers from Margaret Atwood
In his new book, Rushdie takes the ready-made mythology of the jinn and creates a colliding worlds-type story complete with multiple settings and multiple timelines. It’s an ambitious effort that would generally make me swoon but instead largely bored me to tears. It took me a while to get into this novel and longer than my usual pace to finish it. The book’s main thrust starts with jinn princess Dunia. In the 12th century, Dunia makes the classic blunder of falling for a human. The human husband she takes is a philosopher named Averroes (who is also called Ibn Rusd—a self-referential wink from Rushdie, perhaps?). The couple raise a big family of half-human, half-jinni children. These descendants are magically gifted, but eventually over time and generations lose touch with their ethnic roots, so to speak. They lose their jinni identity, and their supernatural abilities also fade into oblivion/entropy.
Fast-forward to contemporary NYC, where a Mother of all Storms suddenly bestows powers to various people. It’s inexplicable; it’s a bit random. But, yes, a storm grants Heroes-like status to a few. A character called Geronimo sort of floats off the ground; an orphan kid gives off an aura when in near proximity to people doing shady things. This Storm for the Ages also does so much more. It sparks some kind of breaking of boundaries between the supernatural world and the human world and we learn that a war that’s been brewing under the surface is now coming to the fore. Pax Jinn is over.
Perhaps it’s just Rushdie’s awkward familiarity with the world of fantasy but there was something forced about the whole set-up, as if Rushdie decided to sprinkle some magical details here and there and hoped for the best. The result is a novel filled with canned fantasy tropes, most of the time used clumsily, and a world that is hackneyed and contrived. Detail is conflated with depth, and Rushdie seems to pile on the mythology as if he were following a template. Where this lack of sophistication is most evident is in the background we are given about the various dark forces threatening the world: Zumurrud, Shining Ruby, and the rest of the evil gang are all inflated in garish detail. It’s beyond silly and not in the least bit entertaining or compelling. Do we need the long-winded descriptions about the families and the clothes they wear and their philosophies in such tedious detail? Some writers can do this enviably well in seamless world-building, but Rusdhie splatters the canvas when he should be using a lighter hand. What’s neglected is the human element of the story. For all the flash of the various characters and their powers, they all seem so blah, so flat. It’s not elemental—it’s one-dimensional.
The saving grace (for some readers, I assume) is that it faithfully follows the classic Rushdie pattern of exploring those big, hefty arguments for and against religion. Faith vs. secularism. And the framework inspired by Thousand and One Nights is pretty ingenious—stories within stories.
Two Years wears its fantasy like throwaway fashion. Overall, I found the novel hastily stitched together, badly edited and organized, and disappointing. If you are new to Salman Rushdie's work, read this one with caution or look elsewhere.
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and David Mitchell to Colson Whitehead and Jennifer Egan all making it perfectly acceptable now to dabble in the borderlands of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, horror. Which seems like the natural evolution of things (hurray!). So it’s no surprise that Salman Rushdie has jumped on the bandwagon with such gusto in his latest novel Two Years Eight Months And Twenty-Eight Nights.In his new book, Rushdie takes the ready-made mythology of the jinn and creates a colliding worlds-type story complete with multiple settings and multiple timelines. It’s an ambitious effort that would generally make me swoon but instead largely bored me to tears. It took me a while to get into this novel and longer than my usual pace to finish it. The book’s main thrust starts with jinn princess Dunia. In the 12th century, Dunia makes the classic blunder of falling for a human. The human husband she takes is a philosopher named Averroes (who is also called Ibn Rusd—a self-referential wink from Rushdie, perhaps?). The couple raise a big family of half-human, half-jinni children. These descendants are magically gifted, but eventually over time and generations lose touch with their ethnic roots, so to speak. They lose their jinni identity, and their supernatural abilities also fade into oblivion/entropy.
Fast-forward to contemporary NYC, where a Mother of all Storms suddenly bestows powers to various people. It’s inexplicable; it’s a bit random. But, yes, a storm grants Heroes-like status to a few. A character called Geronimo sort of floats off the ground; an orphan kid gives off an aura when in near proximity to people doing shady things. This Storm for the Ages also does so much more. It sparks some kind of breaking of boundaries between the supernatural world and the human world and we learn that a war that’s been brewing under the surface is now coming to the fore. Pax Jinn is over.
Perhaps it’s just Rushdie’s awkward familiarity with the world of fantasy but there was something forced about the whole set-up, as if Rushdie decided to sprinkle some magical details here and there and hoped for the best. The result is a novel filled with canned fantasy tropes, most of the time used clumsily, and a world that is hackneyed and contrived. Detail is conflated with depth, and Rushdie seems to pile on the mythology as if he were following a template. Where this lack of sophistication is most evident is in the background we are given about the various dark forces threatening the world: Zumurrud, Shining Ruby, and the rest of the evil gang are all inflated in garish detail. It’s beyond silly and not in the least bit entertaining or compelling. Do we need the long-winded descriptions about the families and the clothes they wear and their philosophies in such tedious detail? Some writers can do this enviably well in seamless world-building, but Rusdhie splatters the canvas when he should be using a lighter hand. What’s neglected is the human element of the story. For all the flash of the various characters and their powers, they all seem so blah, so flat. It’s not elemental—it’s one-dimensional.
The saving grace (for some readers, I assume) is that it faithfully follows the classic Rushdie pattern of exploring those big, hefty arguments for and against religion. Faith vs. secularism. And the framework inspired by Thousand and One Nights is pretty ingenious—stories within stories.
Two Years wears its fantasy like throwaway fashion. Overall, I found the novel hastily stitched together, badly edited and organized, and disappointing. If you are new to Salman Rushdie's work, read this one with caution or look elsewhere.
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LibraryThing member bodachliath
This book is magical in more ways than one, at times reminiscent of Saramago's modern parables or Bulgakov's the Master and Margarita, and very different to any of Rushdie's earlier novels. Having read it in an intense two days, it is probably too soon for me to assess it objectively.
At face value
There is also a huge range of allusions both ancient and modern, and many barbed comments about real world issues. The title itself is an allusion to the Thousand and One Nights, and also the length of the "Strangenesses" i.e. the period during which the jinns can cross from their fairyland (Peristan) to the human world. The two sides in the war can be read simply as good and evil, but in Rushdie's world it is the rational female atheists who triumph over the belligerent males and their controlling gods [this is not a spoiler - it is clear from early in the book that the whole thing is told from the perspective of a deep future 1000 years after the main events].
Rushdie clearly relished placing his supernatural beings in a modern context - particularly when describing the jaded seen-it-all-before reactions of New Yorkers to the sudden emergence of miracles and other inexplicable phenomena in their midst, which become comic set pieces.
The book is largely about the power of stories and language, and how myths, legends, ideas and religions adapt to suit human needs, but Rushdie is too much of a romantic not to make his optimistic vision for the future of humanity central.
At face value
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it is not the kind of story I would normally read - an apocalyptic fantasy in which the human world becomes a battlefield for competing jinns. The main reason it works (or at least held my attention) is that Rushdie can master so many literary forms. Humour and playfulness are never far from the surface, and there is much about the history of myths and legends and what they have in common, not to mention a sprinkling of philosophy. There is also a huge range of allusions both ancient and modern, and many barbed comments about real world issues. The title itself is an allusion to the Thousand and One Nights, and also the length of the "Strangenesses" i.e. the period during which the jinns can cross from their fairyland (Peristan) to the human world. The two sides in the war can be read simply as good and evil, but in Rushdie's world it is the rational female atheists who triumph over the belligerent males and their controlling gods [this is not a spoiler - it is clear from early in the book that the whole thing is told from the perspective of a deep future 1000 years after the main events].
Rushdie clearly relished placing his supernatural beings in a modern context - particularly when describing the jaded seen-it-all-before reactions of New Yorkers to the sudden emergence of miracles and other inexplicable phenomena in their midst, which become comic set pieces.
The book is largely about the power of stories and language, and how myths, legends, ideas and religions adapt to suit human needs, but Rushdie is too much of a romantic not to make his optimistic vision for the future of humanity central.
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LibraryThing member teresakayep
One thousand and one nights. That's how long the war between our world and fairyland, the world of the jinn, lasted. But roots of the war go back 1,001 years, when Dunia, a female jinn (or jinnia), fell in love with a man named Ibn Rushd. Their descendants--part human and part jinn and totally
That sounds straightforward enough, but Salman Rushdie does not tell this story in a straightforward way. This is a story in which two central characters are dead men debating God versus reason and whether the war between the worlds will drive them to belief or unbelief. So there's a philosophical element to the action. The story's narrator is speaking from long after the war, and the known history is fragmented. Most of the characters feel like characters from myth, rather than full-bodied, complex people. We're told of their feelings and motivations in the moment, but we don't get to see deeply into their souls. We learn what's necessary to the story, but not much more.
Rushdie's style of storytelling takes tremendous skill, and the way the threads come together in the end is close to breathtaking, but the style kept me at a distance from a story that would normally grip me. It reminded me of why I so often love novels that put flesh on myths and fairy tales. I may enjoy the originals for what they are, but I'd rather spend time with a book that gives me more than semi-human objects that are moved around to suit the story. A few of Rushdie's characters come close to feeling real, but I wanted to know all of them better than I did. The gardener who suddenly levitates, Mr. Geronimo, is one example. And the vengeful Teresa Saca, who became so important to the book's conclusion, deserved more of a story than she got.
The trouble with this book is that I wanted more of it, even though there's a lot of story here already. It's jammed with characters and with events and with ideas, but it's such a short book that few of these elements have time to breathe. With so much going on, there wasn't enough to make me care. It's a myth without flesh and bone. Give me that, too, and This pretty good book could be remarkable.
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unaware of their own origins--form an army against the jinn who enter our world when the barriers between our world and the jinn's fairyland break down. That sounds straightforward enough, but Salman Rushdie does not tell this story in a straightforward way. This is a story in which two central characters are dead men debating God versus reason and whether the war between the worlds will drive them to belief or unbelief. So there's a philosophical element to the action. The story's narrator is speaking from long after the war, and the known history is fragmented. Most of the characters feel like characters from myth, rather than full-bodied, complex people. We're told of their feelings and motivations in the moment, but we don't get to see deeply into their souls. We learn what's necessary to the story, but not much more.
Rushdie's style of storytelling takes tremendous skill, and the way the threads come together in the end is close to breathtaking, but the style kept me at a distance from a story that would normally grip me. It reminded me of why I so often love novels that put flesh on myths and fairy tales. I may enjoy the originals for what they are, but I'd rather spend time with a book that gives me more than semi-human objects that are moved around to suit the story. A few of Rushdie's characters come close to feeling real, but I wanted to know all of them better than I did. The gardener who suddenly levitates, Mr. Geronimo, is one example. And the vengeful Teresa Saca, who became so important to the book's conclusion, deserved more of a story than she got.
The trouble with this book is that I wanted more of it, even though there's a lot of story here already. It's jammed with characters and with events and with ideas, but it's such a short book that few of these elements have time to breathe. With so much going on, there wasn't enough to make me care. It's a myth without flesh and bone. Give me that, too, and This pretty good book could be remarkable.
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LibraryThing member thewanderingjew
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights: A Novel, Salman Rushdie, author; Robert G. Slade, narrator
I think Rushdie is brilliant. The time period in the title computes to 1001 nights. I had to do some research before I could begin to write the review because I could not remember the story of
Ibn Rushd, a Muslim Rationalist, a man who believed in reason and morality, (your eyes do not deceive you, his name looks like the author’s name), and Theologian, Ghazali of Iran, an Islamic scholar, had a philosophical feud. Ghazali was the victor. Rushd (pronounced Roosht), was not faithful enough and was exiled to a community that was famous for being the apparently not so secret, sanctuary of Jews who could not admit they are Jews. When, one day, there was a knock on his door and a woman appeared looking for refuge, he believed that she was one of the Jews who was not a Jew or one who could not admit to being a Jew. Her name was Dunia and she was a Jinn in the body of a human. She came down to Earth from Fairyland, through a wormhole or a slit that opened between both worlds. She fell in love with Ibn, although he was human and much older than she was, and she, in this human form, stayed with him and bore him many children, creating a race of parasite Jinn. These Jinn were both feared and revered, depending on the circumstances, since it was discovered that they had special powers and were thought to spread unusual diseases. The Jinn were recognizable because they had no earlobes; they were Dunians, descendants of the Jinnia princess, Dunia. It was implied that the Jews might be their descendants, but it was not spoken of out loud because the Jinn were also thought to be the spawn of the devil. Therefore, no one wanted to say they were their descendants. The union of Ibn and Dunia set the stage for a future war and ushered in the “era of the strangenesses”.
Abusive customs regarding the treatment of women were mocked with the use of pleasure bathhouses as were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They were, supposedly, not created by G-d, but rather they actually produced G-d by thinking him up after they ate the apple and this G-d was not happy about being created. I felt that by pairing Dunia and Ibn Saud, Rushdie scorned the antipathy between Muslims and Jews. He introduced many contradictory beliefs and he created interesting words like terraphiles or earth lovers.
He analyzed the creation and destruction of civilizations, their rise and fall because of good and evil, power and weakness, language and how it was used and abused to send the wrong messages. He illustrated the use of pomp and circumstance over substance and moderation, and pointed out that people really wanted to be entertained and listened to those who spoke louder and faster more than they did to those who had substance and could educate them. (It was prescient, if one looks at the rise of Donald Trump, today, in the Presidential election polls.) Usually, people would support the person that made them smile without offering solutions over the person that told them the awful truth. He exploited the fairytale genre in the best possible way because after exposing all of the ills of society, he came to the conclusion that rationality, coherence and reason would eventually win.
This imaginative tale is like the fairy tale that is filled with all of the elements fairytales usually possessed in order to teach children how to deal with life and death, good and evil, love and hate, artifice and betrayal, but in this version, it is teaching adults. It contains humor and life lessons as Rushdie tackled every important issue society has ever faced, and there is not a culture, religion, race, country or subject that he refrained from touching. Everything was fair game. By placing women in a society that required nothing but sex to thrive, he exposed the disrespect for women in certain cultures. He presented the obsession with drugs in some societies, a problem we continue to deal with in the present day. Every conceivable topic was disparaged sardonically and then whimsically analyzed so that rather than being insulting, the ideas were comical and self-deprecating.
In his easy to read prose, he exposed the futility of so many ideas, the foolishness with which they are handled and the stupidity of their premises. He poked fun at broadly accepted beliefs like when he says of a character that “she believed in G-d as firmly as she hated gefilte fish” or that Adam and Eve created G-d when they began to think about him and not the other way around. He exposes the foolishness of using skin color as a measure of worth. He disdained materialism. He illuminated the way a rush to judgment could lead to wrong headed beliefs and decisions. He wrote about the liberal network MSNBC, the preservation of the petrodollar, the weakness of education and welfare programs.
The use of the real names from the past, Ibn Rushd, Spinoza, Darwin, Descartes, Geronimo, Schopenhauer, Nietzche, served to make every allusion even more pertinent, more of a double entendre. There were colorfully named characters, as well, like Shining Ruby who inhabited the body of a financial tycoon named Daniel “mac” Aroni, Jimmy Kapoor also known as Natraj Hero, who became just that, a superhero because of his Jinn heritage, and the baby of truth, another Jinn who was able to recognize those who were not to be trusted and left her mark on them which caused them to decay. Mr. Geronimo, (aka Ibn Rushd), from India, liked the idea that the name people called him recalled to mind a famous American Indian. He was a gardener who wondered as he tended his gardens, if someone else was tending him, if he was perhaps part of someone else’s garden.
The narrator was superb using the proper accents and expression for each scene, however, the strange words made it difficult to follow, so I would recommend the print version over the audio, or having a print version handy to look up words as you listen. All in all, this is a very good read.
I think Rushdie is brilliant. The time period in the title computes to 1001 nights. I had to do some research before I could begin to write the review because I could not remember the story of
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Scheherazade or The 1001 Nights which this fairytale is loosely based upon. His presentation is humorous, even though the subject is really a serious one alluding to the state of current world affairs. The tongue in cheek, sometimes very subtle references to the problems we face today are very thought provoking. This novel is much more than a fairy tale; it is a treatise on humanity, love and hate, peace and war, the future and the past. As the author states, this is a tale about Jinn, not genies, or the Jeanie of television fame who lived in a bottle and had a master. These are not the grantors of wishes. This is a race of creatures both good and evil, made up of smokeless fire.Ibn Rushd, a Muslim Rationalist, a man who believed in reason and morality, (your eyes do not deceive you, his name looks like the author’s name), and Theologian, Ghazali of Iran, an Islamic scholar, had a philosophical feud. Ghazali was the victor. Rushd (pronounced Roosht), was not faithful enough and was exiled to a community that was famous for being the apparently not so secret, sanctuary of Jews who could not admit they are Jews. When, one day, there was a knock on his door and a woman appeared looking for refuge, he believed that she was one of the Jews who was not a Jew or one who could not admit to being a Jew. Her name was Dunia and she was a Jinn in the body of a human. She came down to Earth from Fairyland, through a wormhole or a slit that opened between both worlds. She fell in love with Ibn, although he was human and much older than she was, and she, in this human form, stayed with him and bore him many children, creating a race of parasite Jinn. These Jinn were both feared and revered, depending on the circumstances, since it was discovered that they had special powers and were thought to spread unusual diseases. The Jinn were recognizable because they had no earlobes; they were Dunians, descendants of the Jinnia princess, Dunia. It was implied that the Jews might be their descendants, but it was not spoken of out loud because the Jinn were also thought to be the spawn of the devil. Therefore, no one wanted to say they were their descendants. The union of Ibn and Dunia set the stage for a future war and ushered in the “era of the strangenesses”.
Abusive customs regarding the treatment of women were mocked with the use of pleasure bathhouses as were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. They were, supposedly, not created by G-d, but rather they actually produced G-d by thinking him up after they ate the apple and this G-d was not happy about being created. I felt that by pairing Dunia and Ibn Saud, Rushdie scorned the antipathy between Muslims and Jews. He introduced many contradictory beliefs and he created interesting words like terraphiles or earth lovers.
He analyzed the creation and destruction of civilizations, their rise and fall because of good and evil, power and weakness, language and how it was used and abused to send the wrong messages. He illustrated the use of pomp and circumstance over substance and moderation, and pointed out that people really wanted to be entertained and listened to those who spoke louder and faster more than they did to those who had substance and could educate them. (It was prescient, if one looks at the rise of Donald Trump, today, in the Presidential election polls.) Usually, people would support the person that made them smile without offering solutions over the person that told them the awful truth. He exploited the fairytale genre in the best possible way because after exposing all of the ills of society, he came to the conclusion that rationality, coherence and reason would eventually win.
This imaginative tale is like the fairy tale that is filled with all of the elements fairytales usually possessed in order to teach children how to deal with life and death, good and evil, love and hate, artifice and betrayal, but in this version, it is teaching adults. It contains humor and life lessons as Rushdie tackled every important issue society has ever faced, and there is not a culture, religion, race, country or subject that he refrained from touching. Everything was fair game. By placing women in a society that required nothing but sex to thrive, he exposed the disrespect for women in certain cultures. He presented the obsession with drugs in some societies, a problem we continue to deal with in the present day. Every conceivable topic was disparaged sardonically and then whimsically analyzed so that rather than being insulting, the ideas were comical and self-deprecating.
In his easy to read prose, he exposed the futility of so many ideas, the foolishness with which they are handled and the stupidity of their premises. He poked fun at broadly accepted beliefs like when he says of a character that “she believed in G-d as firmly as she hated gefilte fish” or that Adam and Eve created G-d when they began to think about him and not the other way around. He exposes the foolishness of using skin color as a measure of worth. He disdained materialism. He illuminated the way a rush to judgment could lead to wrong headed beliefs and decisions. He wrote about the liberal network MSNBC, the preservation of the petrodollar, the weakness of education and welfare programs.
The use of the real names from the past, Ibn Rushd, Spinoza, Darwin, Descartes, Geronimo, Schopenhauer, Nietzche, served to make every allusion even more pertinent, more of a double entendre. There were colorfully named characters, as well, like Shining Ruby who inhabited the body of a financial tycoon named Daniel “mac” Aroni, Jimmy Kapoor also known as Natraj Hero, who became just that, a superhero because of his Jinn heritage, and the baby of truth, another Jinn who was able to recognize those who were not to be trusted and left her mark on them which caused them to decay. Mr. Geronimo, (aka Ibn Rushd), from India, liked the idea that the name people called him recalled to mind a famous American Indian. He was a gardener who wondered as he tended his gardens, if someone else was tending him, if he was perhaps part of someone else’s garden.
The narrator was superb using the proper accents and expression for each scene, however, the strange words made it difficult to follow, so I would recommend the print version over the audio, or having a print version handy to look up words as you listen. All in all, this is a very good read.
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LibraryThing member bookczuk
Once again, I've left it too long between the reading of a book and the writing of my thoughts. Blame it on summer days, or 1,001 other reasons.
Rushdie's novel is set in a New York City of some time in the future. (How far in the future becomes rather uncertain, as at points in the novel, our time
It all stems, according to Mr Rushdie, from the union centuries ago, of Dunia, a Jinn princess and a human. She slipped between the cracks of reality from her world to ours, fell in love, and produced scads of children with her mortal husband, the descendants of whom scattered around the world and are at the center of this firestorm battle of dark and light.
Though the book seems to be billed as magical realism, I think there's a heavy element of fantasy (after all, there are Jinn) and even urban fantasy (Jinn and their offspring living in NYC) as well. The story was periodically captivating, and alternatively less so, but ultimately worth the read for me. The backstory of the two lovers, and the world Rushdie created for the Jinn was fun. And I really liked the character of Mr Geronimo, the gardener. I also found new words to use for furious and frequent copulation (which apparently is a big part of Jinn existence), that maybe, some day, I can slip into a sentence. But it may be two years, eight months and twenty-eight nights (add it up, folks, and you'll find the link to Scheherazade and the story-telling in the book) to do so.
Many thanks to Library-Thing and the Publishers for sending this book my way.
Tags: advanced-reader-copy, early-review-librarything, an-author-i-read, made-me-look-something-up, magical-realism, fantasy, read-in-2015, taught-me-something, urban-fantasy, vampires-ghosts-and-other-creatures
Rushdie's novel is set in a New York City of some time in the future. (How far in the future becomes rather uncertain, as at points in the novel, our time
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period is referred to as if we are ancestors, but the world seems relatively unchanged in the interim-- could be 200 years, could be next week.) Strange things are happening: a gardener finds his feet no longer touch the ground; an abandoned baby can identify the corrupt, which is problematic as she was left at the mayor's office and adopted by the mayor. A child falls on the railroad track and the rails melt like ice cream, so she is able to be rescued. An artist's work becomes real. There's a weird firestorm, and the world seems to be coming unhinged.It all stems, according to Mr Rushdie, from the union centuries ago, of Dunia, a Jinn princess and a human. She slipped between the cracks of reality from her world to ours, fell in love, and produced scads of children with her mortal husband, the descendants of whom scattered around the world and are at the center of this firestorm battle of dark and light.
Though the book seems to be billed as magical realism, I think there's a heavy element of fantasy (after all, there are Jinn) and even urban fantasy (Jinn and their offspring living in NYC) as well. The story was periodically captivating, and alternatively less so, but ultimately worth the read for me. The backstory of the two lovers, and the world Rushdie created for the Jinn was fun. And I really liked the character of Mr Geronimo, the gardener. I also found new words to use for furious and frequent copulation (which apparently is a big part of Jinn existence), that maybe, some day, I can slip into a sentence. But it may be two years, eight months and twenty-eight nights (add it up, folks, and you'll find the link to Scheherazade and the story-telling in the book) to do so.
Many thanks to Library-Thing and the Publishers for sending this book my way.
Tags: advanced-reader-copy, early-review-librarything, an-author-i-read, made-me-look-something-up, magical-realism, fantasy, read-in-2015, taught-me-something, urban-fantasy, vampires-ghosts-and-other-creatures
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LibraryThing member tloeffler
Strange events start happening to people in New York without earlobes after a storm. A gardener's finds himself several inches off the ground; an abandoned baby is able to identify corruption; a graphic novelist confronts his own creation. Turns out that they are all descendants of the jinn Dunia
I tried very hard to like this book. It's by a famous author, it's full of fantasy, it's billed as a "timeless love story." But I just couldn't get into it. There were far too many run-on sentences (a pet peeve of mine unless it's done REALLY well). The story jerked rather than flowed. There wasn't a single character that I could relate to. My mind kept wandering, and it took me much longer than it should have to read.
This book will appeal to a lot of people. I'm just not one of them...
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to the tenth or twelfth generation and her marriage to the mortal Ibn Rushd, and the storm has opened a portal between human and the jinn world and a war between light and darkness has begun.I tried very hard to like this book. It's by a famous author, it's full of fantasy, it's billed as a "timeless love story." But I just couldn't get into it. There were far too many run-on sentences (a pet peeve of mine unless it's done REALLY well). The story jerked rather than flowed. There wasn't a single character that I could relate to. My mind kept wandering, and it took me much longer than it should have to read.
This book will appeal to a lot of people. I'm just not one of them...
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LibraryThing member avanders
I don't know why this one was so hard for me to review. Rushdie has written a lyrical and poetic tale that is supposed to be a spin on 1001 nights. It is about a storm in the approximate-now (a little in the future) that resulted in 1001 nights of "strangenesses," a near-millennium long debate
It's about a jinni who falls in love with a philosopher in the past, who allows him to mistreat her and refuse to marry her and give all of her children (with him) his legitimate name, and who passes back into her own world for nearly a thousand years, while their children have children and so on until there are many descendants all over the world and we are in the approximate-now. It is then about a re-awakening of the philosopher and his philosophical nemesis and their continued intellectual debate which turns into a physical war, apparently between the jinn and the humans but, at its heart, between the two philosophies. It then becomes about the war and the strangenesses that are indicative of that time when the jinn sought to take control and the humans, many descendants of the jinni-who-fell-in-love and her philosopher, who fought back. And it is all told as a history, from the perspective of the future (near-1000 years in the future) descendants of the descendants.
Maybe that's why it's been so hard to review... it's much to wrap your head around. It is interesting and it is pretty and it is thought-provoking. It is romantic and harsh and philosophical. It is historical and analytical and distant. It is so many things (in not that many pages!), and it is a dense, thoughtful read. And it is enjoyable, but not fun. It is fulfilling in many ways, but not complete. Its focus is broad - covering millennia - and yet it is almost only about 1 person (the jinni who fell in love with a human). And it is even funny. Rushdie throws in a lot of repetition about the obsession of the jinn (sex) that, in lesser hands would have been infuriating but was, instead, point-making and amusing. I really appreciated a lot about the book. I liked Rushdie's story and imagination and his take on the 1001 nights.
What weren't so great to me were the pace and the fact that it seemed a bit unfocused. I would have liked the book to be a little more intentional about being 1 thing or another. I would have loved Rushdie's take on the fantastical or Rushdie's romance and philosophy or Rushdie's political waxing as a historical tome... but attempting all 3 at once ended up feeling a bit slow and cumbersome. It also felt a bit unfocused... I'm not sure why - it's not simply the time-period or the variety of characters that are covered - I think it was the constant shift in perspective, perhaps without enough of a shift in perspective. Maybe there was too much sameness with all the differences. I'm not sure, but it felt, to me, a little unfocused and a little belabored.
Nevertheless, I am very glad to have read this. I am looking forward to more Rushdie. I would definitely recommend to Rushdie fans. I would also recommend to those interested in a philosophical evaluation of our time with some fantasy thrown in for good measure. But I'm not sure I would recommend to someone looking for a quick fun magic-realism tale - this one takes on a more serious tone and pace. All in all, THREE AND A HALF of 5 stars.
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between two philosophers that began in the far past and continued into the time of the strangenesses, and a historical account of the narrators' ancestors, who began with one of the philosophers and continued into the 1001 nights of strangenesses. So right, that doesn't clear it up. It's about a jinni who falls in love with a philosopher in the past, who allows him to mistreat her and refuse to marry her and give all of her children (with him) his legitimate name, and who passes back into her own world for nearly a thousand years, while their children have children and so on until there are many descendants all over the world and we are in the approximate-now. It is then about a re-awakening of the philosopher and his philosophical nemesis and their continued intellectual debate which turns into a physical war, apparently between the jinn and the humans but, at its heart, between the two philosophies. It then becomes about the war and the strangenesses that are indicative of that time when the jinn sought to take control and the humans, many descendants of the jinni-who-fell-in-love and her philosopher, who fought back. And it is all told as a history, from the perspective of the future (near-1000 years in the future) descendants of the descendants.
Maybe that's why it's been so hard to review... it's much to wrap your head around. It is interesting and it is pretty and it is thought-provoking. It is romantic and harsh and philosophical. It is historical and analytical and distant. It is so many things (in not that many pages!), and it is a dense, thoughtful read. And it is enjoyable, but not fun. It is fulfilling in many ways, but not complete. Its focus is broad - covering millennia - and yet it is almost only about 1 person (the jinni who fell in love with a human). And it is even funny. Rushdie throws in a lot of repetition about the obsession of the jinn (sex) that, in lesser hands would have been infuriating but was, instead, point-making and amusing. I really appreciated a lot about the book. I liked Rushdie's story and imagination and his take on the 1001 nights.
What weren't so great to me were the pace and the fact that it seemed a bit unfocused. I would have liked the book to be a little more intentional about being 1 thing or another. I would have loved Rushdie's take on the fantastical or Rushdie's romance and philosophy or Rushdie's political waxing as a historical tome... but attempting all 3 at once ended up feeling a bit slow and cumbersome. It also felt a bit unfocused... I'm not sure why - it's not simply the time-period or the variety of characters that are covered - I think it was the constant shift in perspective, perhaps without enough of a shift in perspective. Maybe there was too much sameness with all the differences. I'm not sure, but it felt, to me, a little unfocused and a little belabored.
Nevertheless, I am very glad to have read this. I am looking forward to more Rushdie. I would definitely recommend to Rushdie fans. I would also recommend to those interested in a philosophical evaluation of our time with some fantasy thrown in for good measure. But I'm not sure I would recommend to someone looking for a quick fun magic-realism tale - this one takes on a more serious tone and pace. All in all, THREE AND A HALF of 5 stars.
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LibraryThing member sturlington
In the twelfth century, a female jinn (a jinnia) called Dunia fell in love with a philosopher and bore many children, whose descendants were part-jinn, part-human. A thousand years later, the slits between earth and the world of the jinn reopened, sparking a battle between the dark jinn (the ifrit) Reason wins.
Inspired by A Thousand and One Nights, this is the first novel by Rushdie that I have read. There was a lot to enjoy in it. Rushdie's writing is often very funny, and his philosophical ideas are intriguing. I was particularly intrigued by the future he envisions, a golden age of reason and equality; this story is actually being narrated by humans living one thousand years from now, in which time these events have become legendary as they were the beginning of this age of reason. I wish he had spent more time developing the philosophy. I'm not sure if this novel is typical of Rushdie's style, but that was the biggest problem for me. His prose is purposefully circuitous and repetitive, in a manner of oral storytelling, but for me it lacked focus and full development of his ideas. This was a tantalizing book that was almost, but not quite, great.
I received an advance review copy of this book from the Early Reviewers program in 2015.
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and Dunia and her children. It was also a battle of philosophies, between reason and faith. Inspired by A Thousand and One Nights, this is the first novel by Rushdie that I have read. There was a lot to enjoy in it. Rushdie's writing is often very funny, and his philosophical ideas are intriguing. I was particularly intrigued by the future he envisions, a golden age of reason and equality; this story is actually being narrated by humans living one thousand years from now, in which time these events have become legendary as they were the beginning of this age of reason. I wish he had spent more time developing the philosophy. I'm not sure if this novel is typical of Rushdie's style, but that was the biggest problem for me. His prose is purposefully circuitous and repetitive, in a manner of oral storytelling, but for me it lacked focus and full development of his ideas. This was a tantalizing book that was almost, but not quite, great.
I received an advance review copy of this book from the Early Reviewers program in 2015.
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LibraryThing member vibrantminds
This is a story of how the world in which we live became a world of order and structure by means of the mystical jinn. Dunia, the princess jinnia, left the realms of fairyland to come to earth. Once on earth she fell in love with a human, Ibn Rushd,and bore many children from him. Despite the love
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she came to have for him he left her to fend for herself and her children. In time he aged and died but her love for him never faltered. Many years pass when Ghazali, a nemesis of Ibn, awakens from his grave and in turn awakens Ibn to finish an argument he once had with him that being of which mankind will turn to God in time of conflict or crisis. Ibn disagrees so in order for Ghazali to prove his point he calls on Zummurrud, a jinn he had released from captivity, to wreak havoc on the human race. Dunia has wandered aimlessly since her beloved died but comes to him when he awakens but she is restless and begins to hear the voices of her children's ancestors and realizes this ensuing battle needs to be fought in order to save them and mankind. The battle commences when Dunia's father is murdered by another jinn, one of the Grand Ifrits; thus she seeks revenge and calls her children to do her will. The story was intriguing but at times dragged on until the point was finally reached. It took some adjusting to realize that the individual stories of each of her children's ancestors would eventually connect but getting to that point was challenging at times. Nonetheless it was superb. Show Less
LibraryThing member ozzer
Reading Salman Rushdie is a little like listening to jazz. There is an underlying theme embellished with copious riffs and flourishes that may or may not be relevant to the theme. As with good jazz, the latter are repeated in multiple forms often with lyricism and humor. Rushdie’s style with
The story is equally diverse. It involves a struggle between the worlds inhabited by humans and the fantasy world of the jinn. There is no subtlety here: one side is purely evil and the other good. The human characters are interesting but not well enough developed to be anything more than cartoons. These include a gentle gardener who finds himself strangely detached from the planet, a graphic novelist who is confronted by one of his own scary characters, a baby abandoned in the mayor’s office who can identify corruption and a woman who learns to strike down enemies with lightening bolts. These characters are all decedents of Dunia, a jinn princess, and a human philosopher, Rushd. Curiously all are easily recognized as their decedents and thus demigods by missing earlobes. Dunia manages to rally them against four very dark and demonic jinn—also very flat and cartoonish—who are bent of wreaking havoc on the humans. Her motivations are a mix or revenge for the death of her father and an ongoing attachment to humans. The setting jumps abruptly between the fantasy and real worlds reminding one of a breathless child relating what happens rather than a gifted storyteller. It is possible that Rushdie does this on purpose—stories within stories almost endlessly—but the method does make for an unsettling read.
Curiously, Rushdie seems to favor rationality over faith—although true happiness may require a little of both—but seems to abandon any attempt at a rational progression in his storytelling. This can be a fun read for those who like humorous, breakneck and chaotic tales of strange adventure. It has an important theme, but be forewarned that it is filled with a lot of jazz, some of which works.
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language is immediately recognizable and often pleasing, but can leave one “dazed and confused” if not packaged in a well-focused story. Unfortunately, this story lacks the necessary focus to make it a totally rewarding reading experience. Rushdie’s theme is grand and immediately recognizable in the world today: the conflict between faith and reason with fear driving the former and humanism the latter (think Trump v. Sanders or ISIS and the West). The story is an eclectic mix of history, fantasy, magical realism, thriller, superhero graphic, mythology, war, fable, romance, allegory and philosophy (whew!). That’s a lot to digest and track. Maintaining focus on such a novel would be a challenge for most, but Rushdie is an exceptional writer and almost pulls of this mix with humor and multiple riffs and flourishes. The story is equally diverse. It involves a struggle between the worlds inhabited by humans and the fantasy world of the jinn. There is no subtlety here: one side is purely evil and the other good. The human characters are interesting but not well enough developed to be anything more than cartoons. These include a gentle gardener who finds himself strangely detached from the planet, a graphic novelist who is confronted by one of his own scary characters, a baby abandoned in the mayor’s office who can identify corruption and a woman who learns to strike down enemies with lightening bolts. These characters are all decedents of Dunia, a jinn princess, and a human philosopher, Rushd. Curiously all are easily recognized as their decedents and thus demigods by missing earlobes. Dunia manages to rally them against four very dark and demonic jinn—also very flat and cartoonish—who are bent of wreaking havoc on the humans. Her motivations are a mix or revenge for the death of her father and an ongoing attachment to humans. The setting jumps abruptly between the fantasy and real worlds reminding one of a breathless child relating what happens rather than a gifted storyteller. It is possible that Rushdie does this on purpose—stories within stories almost endlessly—but the method does make for an unsettling read.
Curiously, Rushdie seems to favor rationality over faith—although true happiness may require a little of both—but seems to abandon any attempt at a rational progression in his storytelling. This can be a fun read for those who like humorous, breakneck and chaotic tales of strange adventure. It has an important theme, but be forewarned that it is filled with a lot of jazz, some of which works.
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LibraryThing member Dokfintong
Don't we all want to like Rusdie's books? Wasn't "Midnight's Children" something new and exciting? Haven't we dipped into Rushdie books in these later years and come away shaking our heads in bewilderment? Is this a good book I just don't get, or is it something less?
Many Amazon reviewers (there
As a reader, my difficulty with Rushdie's books is the style, one I have written about previously as being sentences in a line, like a train. To me this a 1970s style that has not passed the test of time. Novels do not have to be cinematic to be interesting and readable. But I do like them to have color and flavor and Rusdie's work no longer evokes emotion and interest in me.
I received a review copy of "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights: A Novel" by Salman Rushdie (Random House) through NetGalley.com.
Many Amazon reviewers (there
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are 96 reviews as of this writing) discuss Rushdie's examination of the potential for magic in our world, the existence among us of people with unusual skills (no magic necessarily needed) and the strange ways that religion acts on rationality. These are all wonderful themes but I wonder if it isn't time for Rushdie to move on a bit.As a reader, my difficulty with Rushdie's books is the style, one I have written about previously as being sentences in a line, like a train. To me this a 1970s style that has not passed the test of time. Novels do not have to be cinematic to be interesting and readable. But I do like them to have color and flavor and Rusdie's work no longer evokes emotion and interest in me.
I received a review copy of "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights: A Novel" by Salman Rushdie (Random House) through NetGalley.com.
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LibraryThing member tututhefirst
I can't begin to say it better than all the other reviewers and blurbs....
In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that
Unbeknownst to them, they are all descended from the whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, who live in a world separated from ours by a veil. Centuries ago, Dunia, a princess of the jinn, fell in love with a mortal man of reason. Together they produced an astonishing number of children, unaware of their fantastical powers, who spread across generations in the human world
This one has it all: shades of "Ghostbusters", queens, genies, fairy tales, graphic novels, bewitched characters who float above the earth, unable to touch earthly objects - making it impossible to fly on regular planes (try explaining that to the TSA!!), and also creating real problems in the lavatory (think about it!). Deep thoughts, astonishing fun. Convoluted thinking giving us an inventiveness at once breath-taking, thought-proking, and plain raucous fun. An example:
On the day that Adam and Eve invented God.....they at once lost control of him. That is the beginning of the secret history of the world. Man and Woman invented God, who at once eluded their grasp and became more powerful than his creators, and also more malevolent. Like the supercomputer in the film TERMINATOR: "Skynet", sky-god, same thing. Adam and Eve were filled with fear because it was plain that for the rest of time, god would come after them to punish them for the crime of having created him. They came into being simultaneously in a garden...and they had no idea how they got there until a snake led them to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and when they ate its fruit they both simultaneously came up with the idea of a creator-god, a good-and-evil decider, a gardener-god who made the garden, otherwise where did the garden come from, and then planted them in it like rootless plants.
And lo, there, immediately, was god, and he was furious, "How did you come up with the idea of me," he demanded, "who asked you to do that?" and he threw them out of the garden into, of all places, Iraq. "No good deed goes unpunished," said Eve to Adam, and that ought to be the motto of the whole human race.
This is one I read and listened to in audio, and promptly went and bought my own copy. Like the Thousand and One Nights, the reader will want to reach for this one for bedtime stories over and over. It's delightful, it's very deep, and it will continue to provide wonderful amusement, intense contemplation, and enjoyment for many readings. Try it, you'll love it.
In the near future, after a storm strikes New York City, the strangenesses begin. A down-to-earth gardener finds that his feet no longer touch the ground. A graphic novelist awakens in his bedroom to a mysterious entity that
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resembles his own sub–Stan Lee creation. Abandoned at the mayor’s office, a baby identifies corruption with her mere presence, marking the guilty with blemishes and boils. A seductive gold digger is soon tapped to combat forces beyond imagining.Unbeknownst to them, they are all descended from the whimsical, capricious, wanton creatures known as the jinn, who live in a world separated from ours by a veil. Centuries ago, Dunia, a princess of the jinn, fell in love with a mortal man of reason. Together they produced an astonishing number of children, unaware of their fantastical powers, who spread across generations in the human world
This one has it all: shades of "Ghostbusters", queens, genies, fairy tales, graphic novels, bewitched characters who float above the earth, unable to touch earthly objects - making it impossible to fly on regular planes (try explaining that to the TSA!!), and also creating real problems in the lavatory (think about it!). Deep thoughts, astonishing fun. Convoluted thinking giving us an inventiveness at once breath-taking, thought-proking, and plain raucous fun. An example:
On the day that Adam and Eve invented God.....they at once lost control of him. That is the beginning of the secret history of the world. Man and Woman invented God, who at once eluded their grasp and became more powerful than his creators, and also more malevolent. Like the supercomputer in the film TERMINATOR: "Skynet", sky-god, same thing. Adam and Eve were filled with fear because it was plain that for the rest of time, god would come after them to punish them for the crime of having created him. They came into being simultaneously in a garden...and they had no idea how they got there until a snake led them to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and when they ate its fruit they both simultaneously came up with the idea of a creator-god, a good-and-evil decider, a gardener-god who made the garden, otherwise where did the garden come from, and then planted them in it like rootless plants.
And lo, there, immediately, was god, and he was furious, "How did you come up with the idea of me," he demanded, "who asked you to do that?" and he threw them out of the garden into, of all places, Iraq. "No good deed goes unpunished," said Eve to Adam, and that ought to be the motto of the whole human race.
This is one I read and listened to in audio, and promptly went and bought my own copy. Like the Thousand and One Nights, the reader will want to reach for this one for bedtime stories over and over. It's delightful, it's very deep, and it will continue to provide wonderful amusement, intense contemplation, and enjoyment for many readings. Try it, you'll love it.
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LibraryThing member saltmanz
Good stuff. Recounts, from a far-future perspective, a modern-day war in which the jinn from Fairyland invade the Earth for 1001 nights, and a female jinni awakens and rallies her half-human descendants around the world to fight back. Both the narrative and prose do this kind of rambling, run-on
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thing but it's done in a kind of hypnotizing fashion that's a delight to read. I'm not a fan of the "moral" at the end, which boils down to "After our ancestors were invaded by supernatural beings, everybody gave up religion because reasons" but other than that, I loved it. Show Less
LibraryThing member kcshankd
More magic than realism, but well told. I imagine this was fun to write. It turned out too 'mythic' for my taste, but I did appreciate the effort.
LibraryThing member c.archer
This is classic Salman Rushdie. One thousand and one nights is re-imagined as a modern (as well as ancient) fairy tale for adults. It was witty and lyrical but filled with enough characters and stories within a story to make my head spin. I admit that sometimes it was hard to pick up the story, but
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it really flowed when I had more time to read. I would suggest that potential readers keep this in mind and devote longer blocks of time to it rather than trying to read it in bits and pieces. Show Less
LibraryThing member sfosterg
I won an advance reader copy of Salman Rushdie’s Two Years, Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days through the Goodreads First Reads Giveaways.
Rushdie showcases a time when the worlds of the humans and Jinn collide. A jinnia, Dunia, falls in love with an elder philosopher, Ibn Rushd, centuries ago.
Rushdie adeptly intertwines many different themes into the fabric of the story; mysticism, realism, philosophy, romance, and social commentary. I loved the humor and chuckled throughout the book. I can appreciate this novel intellectually, but it fell a little flat for me as a reader. It seems Rushdie was focusing on the broader concepts, but missed the point of telling a good story.
Rushdie showcases a time when the worlds of the humans and Jinn collide. A jinnia, Dunia, falls in love with an elder philosopher, Ibn Rushd, centuries ago.
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After a cataclysmic storm, a wormhole was opened and the dark jinn entered the human world kicking off 1001 nights of unusual activity. Dunia gathers her progeny, who have jinn blood and latent powers, to fight the dark forces.Rushdie adeptly intertwines many different themes into the fabric of the story; mysticism, realism, philosophy, romance, and social commentary. I loved the humor and chuckled throughout the book. I can appreciate this novel intellectually, but it fell a little flat for me as a reader. It seems Rushdie was focusing on the broader concepts, but missed the point of telling a good story.
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LibraryThing member rmckeown
By all means do not allow the reputation of Salman Rushdie prevent you from reading his latest novel, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days. Like all his works – with the possible exception of The Satanic Verses – his latest novel contains jokes, puns, humor, and erudition of every sort.
Deep in to the novel, Rushdie provides an interesting theory of “story.” He writes, “We tell this story still as it has come down to us through many retellings, mouth to ear, ear to mouth, both the story and the poisoned box and the stories it contained, in which the poison was concealed. This is what stories are, experience retold by many tongues, to which, sometimes, we give a single name, Homer, Valmiki, Vyasa, Schererzade. We, for our own part, simply call ourselves ‘we.’ ‘We’ are the creature that tells itself stories to understand what sort of creature it is. As they pass down to us the stories lift themselves away from time and place, losing the specificity of their beginnings, but gaining the purity of essences, of being simply themselves. And by extension, or by the same token, as we like to say, though we do not know what the token is or was, these stories become what we know, what we understand, and what we are, or, perhaps we should say, what we have become, or can perhaps be” (182-183).
Admittedly, reading Rushdie requires great concentration, lest the reader miss out on all the fun. My review will concentrate only on the second chapter, which has all his powerful attributes at full strength. The novel revolves around the tales in the style of the thousand and one tales of Scheherazade; that is, the story of a jinniri, Dunia, who slipped between worlds and interacted with ordinary mortals. Some of these jinni (male) or jinniri (female), were good, some evil, but all were mischievous. Ibn Rushd fell under the spell of the princess of the jinniri, and she produced thousands of children, all of whom had no earlobes. Her group of jinniri were known as Duniazát, and Rushd forbade her to take his name for any of the children. Hundreds of years later, a descendant of Dunia, Raphael Heironymus Manzes known as Mr. Geronimo Manzes, had no earlobes. When the slit between the worlds opened again, jinni and jinniri poured into our world, wreaking havoc known as “The Strangenesses.” Geronimo was affected when he suddenly found himself unable to touch the ground with any part of his body. He had been away many years, and found the new Bombay – Mumbai – dramatically different. Rushdie writes, “It was the garden that spoke to Geronimo. It seemed to be clawing at the house, snaking its way inside, trying to destroy the barriers that separated the exterior space from the interior. In the upper regions of the house, flowers and grass successfully surmounted its walls, and the floor became a lawn. He left that place knowing he no longer wanted to be an architect. […] Manzes made his way to Kyoto in Japan and sat at the feet of the great horticulturist Ryonosuke Shimura, who taught him that the garden was the outward expression of inner truth, the place where the dreams of our childhoods collided with the archetypes of our cultures, and created beauty” (35).
Salman Rushdie’s intellectual allegory, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days, brings to one time and place – the present – and lays all the problems and difficulties we face from climate change to financial collapse at the feet of the jinni and jinniri. The web of “Magic Realism” stories Rushdie has spun will enchant and dismay at times, but those tales will always intrigue. 5 stars
--Jim, 12/19/15
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According to his website, Rushdie has won numerous awards from around the world, including the U.S., France, Germany, The European Union, Mexico, Italy, Hungary, and India, to name only a few. He holds honorary doctorates and fellowships at six European and six American universities, is an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at M.I.T, and University Distinguished Professor at Emory University. His list of humanitarian and cultural awards from around the world is equally impressive. His Booker Prize winning novel, Midnight’s Children, was adapted for the stage in London and New York, and by a public vote, the novel was overwhelmingly named the “Best of the Booker.” It was also turned into a film and translated into forty languages. Only the Nobel Prize eludes him, which, in my opinion, stems from the unfortunate uproar surrounding the publication of Satanic Verses. He is truly an international literary treasure.Deep in to the novel, Rushdie provides an interesting theory of “story.” He writes, “We tell this story still as it has come down to us through many retellings, mouth to ear, ear to mouth, both the story and the poisoned box and the stories it contained, in which the poison was concealed. This is what stories are, experience retold by many tongues, to which, sometimes, we give a single name, Homer, Valmiki, Vyasa, Schererzade. We, for our own part, simply call ourselves ‘we.’ ‘We’ are the creature that tells itself stories to understand what sort of creature it is. As they pass down to us the stories lift themselves away from time and place, losing the specificity of their beginnings, but gaining the purity of essences, of being simply themselves. And by extension, or by the same token, as we like to say, though we do not know what the token is or was, these stories become what we know, what we understand, and what we are, or, perhaps we should say, what we have become, or can perhaps be” (182-183).
Admittedly, reading Rushdie requires great concentration, lest the reader miss out on all the fun. My review will concentrate only on the second chapter, which has all his powerful attributes at full strength. The novel revolves around the tales in the style of the thousand and one tales of Scheherazade; that is, the story of a jinniri, Dunia, who slipped between worlds and interacted with ordinary mortals. Some of these jinni (male) or jinniri (female), were good, some evil, but all were mischievous. Ibn Rushd fell under the spell of the princess of the jinniri, and she produced thousands of children, all of whom had no earlobes. Her group of jinniri were known as Duniazát, and Rushd forbade her to take his name for any of the children. Hundreds of years later, a descendant of Dunia, Raphael Heironymus Manzes known as Mr. Geronimo Manzes, had no earlobes. When the slit between the worlds opened again, jinni and jinniri poured into our world, wreaking havoc known as “The Strangenesses.” Geronimo was affected when he suddenly found himself unable to touch the ground with any part of his body. He had been away many years, and found the new Bombay – Mumbai – dramatically different. Rushdie writes, “It was the garden that spoke to Geronimo. It seemed to be clawing at the house, snaking its way inside, trying to destroy the barriers that separated the exterior space from the interior. In the upper regions of the house, flowers and grass successfully surmounted its walls, and the floor became a lawn. He left that place knowing he no longer wanted to be an architect. […] Manzes made his way to Kyoto in Japan and sat at the feet of the great horticulturist Ryonosuke Shimura, who taught him that the garden was the outward expression of inner truth, the place where the dreams of our childhoods collided with the archetypes of our cultures, and created beauty” (35).
Salman Rushdie’s intellectual allegory, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days, brings to one time and place – the present – and lays all the problems and difficulties we face from climate change to financial collapse at the feet of the jinni and jinniri. The web of “Magic Realism” stories Rushdie has spun will enchant and dismay at times, but those tales will always intrigue. 5 stars
--Jim, 12/19/15
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LibraryThing member bookmuse56
Rushdie weaves Eastern mythology, pop-cultural presentations, literary references, history, and an eternal love story into fairytale-like configuration exploring the universality across time and space of the continuing conflicts of evil and good, faith and reason, freedom and suppression.
I was
.
Captivating language that is both lyrical and wonderfully detailed, incredible storytelling, and beguiling characters makes for a thought-provoking read that lingers in the mind after the last page is read.
I received this book from the Amazon VINE program in exchange for an honest view.
I was
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excited that the world of the Jinn would be front and center to this story. This was a marathon reading experience for me, and at times the storyline did not hold my attention. But, once I had put the book down for a couple of days I wondered what was going to happen next and would pick the book up and once again be intrigued with the happenings. I think this is one book where I would have benefited/enjoyed reading with a buddy where we would discuss events, characters, and themes along the way. One of the high points of the book for me was the telling of the back-story of the characters and the author’s use of magical realism.
Captivating language that is both lyrical and wonderfully detailed, incredible storytelling, and beguiling characters makes for a thought-provoking read that lingers in the mind after the last page is read.
I received this book from the Amazon VINE program in exchange for an honest view.
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LibraryThing member dbsovereign
This is the bizarre, magically realistic tale of two worlds and how they became one. In the process Rushdie shows us the absurd glue that seems to bind us and keep us apart. Or, to put it another way: He fashions a world where “I Dream of Jeanie” meets _The Iliad_.
LibraryThing member Neftzger
Rushdie's book is an entertaining take on mythology in the modern world. The writing demonstrates strong architecture within the plot that incorporates beautiful use of themes, humor, and cycles of time (all the significant events last two years eight months and twenty eight nights).
What happens
This is a contemporary urban fantasy written with humor reminiscent of Michael Chabon. The story shows the cosmological development of conflict over a long period of time, while at the same time studying human frailty and the capacity to love.
What happens
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when the veil between two worlds becomes thin enough for magical and mortal beings to mix together and create a hybrid race? Over the course of generations, the roots in magic remain imbedded (although undiscovered) as the forces of good and evil battle.This is a contemporary urban fantasy written with humor reminiscent of Michael Chabon. The story shows the cosmological development of conflict over a long period of time, while at the same time studying human frailty and the capacity to love.
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LibraryThing member Yggie
My friend recommended this book to me by saying it was too weird and fantasy-like for her. A blend of fantasy and literature, and based on the blurb perhaps some magical realism too? Sounded perfect to me!
It started out promising, with jinns and jinnias and clever wordplay - and then it stayed just
The story itself was.. ok. Not great, not terrible. It sort of drowned in all the wittiness, and in the second half it also started drowning in the rants against faith, and believers, and religion. It wasn't offensive, just.. well, boring, to be honest.
We get the point - fear is used to drive people to religion, religion is used to oppress the masses, but the manipulating masterminds don't realise that this strategy will eventually lead to those masses turning away from faith. Also, in the purely hypothetical case that there actually is a god, he/she/it would want us, their children, to grow up and become independent. Fine, get on with the story instead of making these points over and over again.
Wouldn't recommend, won't read again.
It started out promising, with jinns and jinnias and clever wordplay - and then it stayed just
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that. Clever, and witty, with sentences that run for paragraphs, referencing older stories, and history, describing famous people without using their name, that kind of stuff. Usually I sort of like that, finding these little easter eggs makes me feel smart, but in this case it was just too much. It was almost desperately self-conscious, trying to be intelligent and interesting. The story itself was.. ok. Not great, not terrible. It sort of drowned in all the wittiness, and in the second half it also started drowning in the rants against faith, and believers, and religion. It wasn't offensive, just.. well, boring, to be honest.
We get the point - fear is used to drive people to religion, religion is used to oppress the masses, but the manipulating masterminds don't realise that this strategy will eventually lead to those masses turning away from faith. Also, in the purely hypothetical case that there actually is a god, he/she/it would want us, their children, to grow up and become independent. Fine, get on with the story instead of making these points over and over again.
Wouldn't recommend, won't read again.
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LibraryThing member hemlokgang
Once again, Salman Rushdie cuts loose his verbal bombardment, leaving the reader gasping for breath, reeling from the word rush, and jumping for joy at the author's combination of wit and wisdom. Come witness the War of the Worlds, the battle for peace and power, and don't miss the blatant
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references to contemporary issues and public figures. It seems Rushdie wants the reader to be a child who is terrified and then soothed by a fairy tale. Perhaps he even wants the reader to step back, breathe deeply, and get some perspective on the events on our planet, our priorities, and our problems. A magnificent fairy tale for the erudite. Show Less
Awards
San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year (Fiction — 2015)
The Observer Book of the Year (Fiction — 2015)
Original publication date
2015-09
ISBN
081299891X / 9780812998917