Rushdie Strikes Back

Victory City Salman Rushdie Alfred A Knopf Rs.519 Pages 352 An engaging novel about the founding and ultimate fate of the Vijayanagar empire (called Bisnaga) after a European mispronounces it On August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was due to speak at the Chautauqua Institution in New York State. Shortly after the speakers ascended the stage, a 24-year-old man named Hadi Matar attacked Rushdie with a knife. While Rushdie survived the attack, he was left visually impaired in one eye, much like the blinded protagonist of his new novel who recovers her personhood after being blinded by a king for her written words. At the time of the attack last year, Rushdie’s next novel Victory City was set to be released in early 2023. Victory City is an engaging fictional saga about the founding and ultimate fate of the medieval Vijayanagar empire (called Bisnaga in the story after a European mispronounces it), which spanned most of southern India between the 14-16th centuries. At the centre of the novel is a young girl, Pampa Kampana, who grows up to become a celestially blessed sorceress and queen of Bisnaga several times over. She has a powerful desire to live and outlive everyone. This desire has been shaped by her witnessing a jauhar in her childhood. Pampa Kampana loses her mother to this act of collective self-immolation and grapples with grief and disbelief that turn into defiance of death. At this point, she is blessed by Goddess Parvati who pronounces, “You will fight to make sure that no more women are ever burned in this fashion, and that men start considering women in new ways, and you will live just long enough to witness both your success and your failure, to see it all and tell its story, even though once you have finished telling it, you will die immediately and nobody will remember you for four hundred and fifty years.” The novel begins with an excavated manuscript in Sanskrit titled Jayaparajaya (Victory and Defeat) that was interred in a clay pot during the fall of Bisnaga in the 16th century. The story is told by the fictitious translator of the manuscript, who remains a voice that is occasionally seen in a note or a footnote. The translator of this manuscript breathes Pampa Kampana and the Vijayanagar empire back into existence for a 21st century audience. The manuscript is about Pampa Kampana and Bisnaga; it is her story told in her words and how she shaped an empire. In the novel, Pampa Kampana who carries the blessing of Goddess Parvati and lives for over two centuries, gives two battle-weary brothers, Hukka and Bukka, a sack of magic seeds that are sown and burst forth into a city created out of magic. Her dream is of a kingdom where men and women are equal, and no woman is without voice. However, the brothers, who reign in turn and marry Pampa Kampana in turn, struggle with inclusion and religious fundamentalism, which tend to undermine this project…