Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27840 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In The Moor's Last Sigh Salman Rushdie revisits some of the same ground he covered in his greatest novel, Midnight's Children. This book is narrated by Moraes Zogoiby, a.k.a. Moor, who speaks to us from a gravestone in Spain. Like Moor, Rushdie knows about a life spent in banishment from normal society--Rushdie because of the fatwa that followed The Satanic Verses, Moor because he ages at twice the rate of normal humans. Yet Moor's story of travail is bigger than Rushdie's; it encompasses a grand struggle between good and evil while Moor himself stands as allegory for Rushdie's home country of India. Filled with wordplay and ripe with humour, it is an epic work, and Rushdie has the tools to pull it off. He earned a 1995 Whitbread Prize for his efforts.

Synopsis
What do we do when the world's walls - its family structures, its value-systems, it political forms - crumble? The central character of this novel, 'Moor' Zogoiby, only son of a wealthy, artistic-bohemian Bombay family, finds himself in such a moment of crisis. His mother, a famous painter and an emotional despot, worships beauty, but Moor is ugly, he has a deformed hand. Moor falls in love, with a married woman; when their secret is revealed, both are expelled; a suicide pact is proposed, but only the woman dies. Moor chooses to accept his fate, plunges into a life of depravity in Bombay, then becomes embroiled in a major financial scandal. The novel ends in Spain, in the studio of a painter who was a lover of Moor's mother: in a violent climax Moor has, one more, to decide whether to save the life of his lover by sacrificing his own.

From the Publisher
'India has produced a great novelist...a master of perpetual storytelling' V.S. Pritchett, New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Needed a stronger editor!
I've read several Rusdie books before over the years - Midnight's Children first, then the Ground Beneath Her Feet, and also Fury. Despite enjoying all three thoroughly (well, less so Fury, which disintegrates towards the end) I've never felt the compulsion that you get with some authors to read the entire oeuvre. A lot of people tell me that they find Rusdie hard to get into, and often give up in the first 100 pages. To do so is a great shame, as they will miss some wonderful story-telling, but I can understand their reasons - particularly with the Moor's Last Sigh. Initially, it feels a little too much like a re-hash of Midnight's children - the family saga told by the child who - as a result of the cirumstances of their birth - experiences life in a strange and unique manner. With Midnight's Children it was the special powers conferred on those born closest to the clock chime of India's independence, with Moor's Last Sigh it is the double-speed existence for our narrator - a 4 and 1/2 month pregnancy, and each year being two in his body's development.

Similarly, for the union of the grand parents in Midnight's Children (the bed sheet with holes through which, as young suitors, the grandfather slowly pieces together the appearance of the grandmother) we have, in Moor's Last Sigh, the first sexual encounter between mother and father on the spice sacks in a warehouse of the family business. On both occassions the metaphors involved stretch beyond breaking point. There is no denying that Rushdie is a wonderful writer, but at times in the Moor's Last Sigh, it tests the patience. There is meaning in every insignificant detail and thåt meanning is described playfully, and - frustratingly - at great length. It wears you down. Everything is just so loaded with metaphor, that the good ones merge into the ordinary and the bad and overwhelm you. This is Rushdie on full throttle, and no editor appears to be on hand to tell him to apply the brakes. If this is your first Rushdie it may seem glorious - I don't know - but after having read others, I often found it irritating. Particularly as, in the last 150 pages, the writing tightens, the plot come to the fore, we are left with a wonderfully atmospheric and vivid climax. The story itself is rich and strong and the conclusion so well handled that I couldn't help but look back and wish the whole book had been written with such control.

Good book if you can get past the opening few hundred pages, but not a classic, and not one to re-read, because the writing smothers the reader as often as it soars.

My First Rushdie
This was my first Salman Rushdie novel, bought on a whim. Despite many tempting distractions I found it unputdownable.

brilliant
salman rushdie's mastery of the english language is second to none. His books are extremely clever and gripping from start to finish. This is his best book apart from Midnight's children (which i'd give 10 stars if i could!)