Victory City
The mesmerising novel from the Booker prize-winning, Sunday Times bestselling author of Midnight’s Children
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Publisher Description
She will breathe a new empire into life – but all worlds can escape their creator…
‘Mesmerising…an epic tribute to the power of words’ ELIF SHAFAK
‘Full of adventure… A celebration of the power of storytelling’ GUARDIAN
In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga, ‘victory city’.
Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s as she attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception.
‘A total pleasure to read’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘One of the planet’s greatest writers’ EVENING STANDARD
‘A triumph… Enthralling’ I
***A FINANCIAL TIMES AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR***
***A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK***
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rushdie (Midnight's Children) conjures a rich if undercooked story of a doomed empire and its creator, a woman who lived to be 247. A Sanskrit manuscript is found buried in a clay pot in present-day southern India. On it is a narrative poem by Pampa Kampana, who, as a child in the 14th century, is granted magical abilities by a goddess to empower women. After nine silent years in a cave, Pampa is visited by two soldiers turned cowherds. Pampa hands them a sack of seeds and instructs them to "grow a city." Through their work, Pampa conjures the city of Bisnaga, where people are "born full-grown from the brown earth." Though Bisnaga's palace guards are strong and noble women, the male soldiers sent out to conquer the surrounding lands are greedy and ruthless. Having taken a turn away from the promise early on of a feminine utopia, the novel grows ponderous with yet another story of violent, narrow-minded men. Still, there's plenty of clever commentary on human corruption and religious purity ("In this way Pampa learned the lesson every creator must learn, even God himself. Once you had created your characters, you had to be bound by their choices"). Fans of Rushdie's magical realism and narrative trickery will find much to admire, even if this won't be remembered as one of his better works.
