Product Description

Haroun's father is the greatest of all storyletters. His magical stories bring laughter to the sad city of Alifbay. But one day something goes wrong and his father runs out of stories to tell. Haroun is determined to return the storyteller's gift to his father. So he flies off on the back of the Hoopie bird to the Sea of Stories - and a fantastic adventure begins.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19186 in Books
• Published on: 2001-09-27
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Salman Rushdie is one of the best contemporary writers of fables and parables, from any culture. Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a delightful tale about a storyteller who loses his skill and a struggle against mysterious forces attempting to block the seas of inspiration from which all stories are derived.

Here's a representative passage about the sources and power of inspiration.

So If the water genie told Haroun about the Ocean of the Stream of Stories, and even though he was full of a sense of hopelessness and failure the magic of the Ocean began to have an effect on Haroun. He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity; and Iff explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories; so that unlike a library of books, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was much more than a storeroom of yarns. It was not dead, but alive. "And if you are very, very careful, or very, very highly skilled, you can dip a cup into the Ocean," Iff told Haroun, "like so," and here he produced a little golden cup from another of his waistcoat pockets, "and you can fill it with water from a single, pure Stream of Story, like so," as he did precisely that...

Customer Reviews

Unputdownable! Wonderful read! Tip top type book!
I love this book. What's more, my daughter is loving it too, and she's only 4 1/2! I hadn't considered reading it to her but she's constantly bugging me to get more stories and one day I went "ark! I can't, all gone, no more stories, empty, sold out, sorry, supply dried up, no longer a subscriber!" So I got it out and started to read and she no longer wants to watch Cartoon Network (true! amazing, I never thought I'd get her off TV!). This is the book for everyone with a bit of imagination and a love for words and stories.

My favourite book of all time!
My mother read me this book once when I was ill. The stories descriptions were so vivid that I had no toruble imagining all the sights. Both my mum & my dad loved to read the book to me as they enjoyed it so much themselves. I bought my copy of this book last year and I must have readit a thousand times since then!

A tale for the child in every grown-up
This is a tale for all kinds of public. It sure is for children but to teach them in the most attractive way imaginable what grown-ups will understand at once. Society is divided between the people who want to be happy and the leaders who want to control them into unhappiness because unhappiness makes people controllable. Hence the fight of a child and his father to restore happiness in the world, and happiness comes from stories, tales, sagas, and all other imaginative adventures that help people be free in their minds and then strong enough to impose their freedom in society. In other words it is a tool to make people strong and satisfied. Of course one could see an allusion to the moslem world and the dark forces who try to control the minds of the people in that part of the world. But it is a universal story too because it is not much more different in our own part of the world where politicians are just comptrollers in chief of our spirits and brains and imaginations and creativities for their own selfish interest. Brilliant and to be read by all those who believe there is a possible world beyond the world of the narrow and selfcentered and egocentric and bureaucratic interest of the few who use the many to satisfy their greed for power, money and cannibalistic domination.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU