An eye on the future

Salman Rushdie's new novel, Victory City, feels like it draws parallels from his own life

- SEEMA GOSWAMI

"If I can't burn you," he told her, "I can certainly burn your book, which I don't need to read to know that it's full of unsuitable and forbidden thoughts, and then you will die and be forgotten, and nobody will know your name... What do you say to that?" That is the threat delivered to Pampa Kampana, the semi-magical, demi-goddess heroine of Salman Rushdie's new novel, Victory City. But it is hard not to see the author himself as the recipient, given what we know of his personal history. Subject to a kill order by the fanatical Ayatollah-led regime of Iran, Rushdie spent decades in hiding, while his book, The Satanic Verses, was burnt in the streets across the world by people who had never read as much as single chapter (or even a single word).

But Rushdie did not die. He lived to tell several other tales. He lived to love (and marry) several other women. He lived to emerge from hiding and appear at literary events, where he was celebrated as a literary demi-God himself.