So I'm half done with "Satanic Verses" and I have to say, it's a bit nostalgic, for me, to read about Rushdie's Bombay. In many ways it's the Bombay of my youth (India is slow to change and ageless in that way) - and also the India of my parents' childhood stories. I'm working on getting the vocabulary translations up - they'll be up before the next meeting, I promise!
As far as the story goes - the magical realism reminds me of "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" by Garcia-Marquez - and the way Rushdie invents words, meshed together in a very Nordic/Germanic linguistic manner is probably an influence in Roi's "God of Small Things." I had no idea what the "satanic verses" of the title were, and only by reading the book was I inspired to more digging into the theological metaphor.
Well, it's a pretty blatant metaphor - Rushdie has no qualms about who his characters are meant to represent. Hell, there's even a character named Salman in the story.
This is a short blog post for me mostly because a) I want to talk about a bunch of things at the meeting today and b) I need to read more of this story before I can comment on it.
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