A master of magic realism has created an allegory for modern America.
I’m Jim McKeown, welcome to Likely Stories, a weekly review of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biographies.
By all means do not allow the reputation of Salman Rushdie prevent you from reading his latest novel, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days. Like all his works – with the possible exception of The Satanic Verses – his latest novel contains jokes, puns, humor, and erudition of every sort. According to his website, Rushdie has won numerous awards from around the world. He holds honorary doctorates and fellowships at six European and six American universities, is an Honorary Professor in the Humanities at M.I.T, and University Distinguished Professor at Emory University. His list of humanitarian and cultural awards from around the world is equally impressive. Salman’s Booker Prize winning novel, Midnight’s Children, was adapted for the stage in London and New York, and by a public vote, the novel was overwhelmingly named the “Best of the Booker.” It was also turned into a film and translated into forty languages. Only the Nobel Prize eludes him, which, in my opinion, stems from the unfortunate uproar surrounding the publication of Satanic Verses. He is truly an international literary treasure.
Admittedly, reading Rushdie requires great concentration, lest the reader miss out on all the fun. The second chapter has all his powerful attributes at full strength. The novel revolves around the story of a jinnia, names Dunia, who slipped between worlds and interacted with ordinary mortals. Some of these jinni (male) or jinnia (female), were good, some evil, but all were mischievous. Ibn Rushd fell under the spell of the princess of the jinnia, and she produced thousands of children, including -- hundreds of years later -- a descendant of Dunia, Raphael Heironymus Manzes known as Mr. Geronimo Manzes. When the slit between the worlds opened again, jinni and jinnia poured into our world, wreaking havoc known as “The Strangenesses.” Geronimo was affected when he suddenly found himself unable to touch the ground with any part of his body. He had been away many years, and found the new Bombay – Mumbai – dramatically different. Rushdie writes, “It was the garden that spoke to Geronimo. It seemed to be clawing at the house, snaking its way inside, trying to destroy the barriers that separated the exterior space from the interior. In the upper regions of the house, flowers and grass successfully surmounted its walls, and the floor became a lawn. He left that place knowing he no longer wanted to be an architect. […] Manzes made his way to Kyoto in Japan and sat at the feet of the great horticulturist Ryonosuke Shimura, who taught him that the garden was the outward expression of inner truth, the place where the dreams of our childhoods collided with the archetypes of our cultures, and created beauty” (35).
Salman Rushdie’s intellectual allegory, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Days, brings to one time and place – the present – and lays all the problems and difficulties we face from climate change to financial collapse at the feet of the jinni and jinnia. The marvelous tale of a war between the jinniri and the earth is fascinating beyond measure. The web of “Magic Realism” stories Rushdie has spun will always intrigue. 5 stars
Likely Stories is a production of KWBU. I’m Jim McKeown. You can read my book blog at RabbitReader.blogspot.com. Join me again next time for Likely Stories, and HAPPY READING!
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