Quite apart from quality and success of his books (in fact, midnight children and The Satanic Verses were both grandiose novels and bestsellers), quite apart from his actual business, literature: if it As Salman Rushdie goes, it is always about his biographical destiny. The 1989 pronounced fatwa, which was still in last year of Islamic Republic of Iran’s bounty – that Salman Rushdie was able to celebrate its 70 birthday in June, unfortunately does not understand itself. When Queen struck him as a knight, one talked less about novels than about fact that in India and Pakistan The British ambassadors were appointed and reported from Kashmir riots. When he is in public, bodyguards make point of view. Rushdie has a hard-to-reach against doppelganger that was imposed on him. What this means for a writer, he told five years ago in his AutobiografieJoseph Anton.
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Why, however, can we ask, has Rushdie, who has been living in New York for 17 years, now written a novel that is almost to be read as a political debate, rar than as a literary work of art? Golden House plays in Americas of immediate present and so explicitly refers to election of Donald Trump that book was greeted promptly as first literary counter of shocked cultural elite. Can this novel withstand short of news events? And: Does he have a chance in race competition with a reality that has become so glaring and improbable, as if it were head birth of a particularly imaginative writer?
The answer: a decided yes. Golden House is bombastic novel of a gifted narrator washed with all waters of magical realism, and those who cannot be captivated to last side must have been very thoroughly opposed to artistic grips of literary seduction Be immune. On or hand, text, where political presence is concerned, is so superficially engaged that one can hardly believe that se passages originate from same spring. Trump, novel teaches, is no one or than Joker that has transformed Manhattan into gloomy comic city of Gotham City overnight. His counterpart is, you might guess, Hillary Clinton aka Batwoman, Posterheldin of an elitist bubble, which sadly overlooked that America is a little bigger than four, five blocks around village. The superhero imagery is not good for novel. But maybe it’s like a great blockbuster movie, which is still running during credits, annoyingly failed dialogues have long since forgiven.
The central and indeed interesting protagonist of novel was born in Bombay, and 2008 emigrated to New York, where he put his dark secrets over overshadowed history and adopted a ridiculously pompous name: Nero Golden. The pregnant first name testifies to a connection to Roman (it is spoken of fluent Latin), but perhaps also to monumental apocalypse; Those who say Nero must not be surprised even in new world when people die in burning houses. Last name Golden? Even with Trump, protagonist has something in common, and it’s not just favorite color. Both play golf, are active in construction industry, hibernate in Florida and operate a private university. In Manhattan, old Indian lives toger with his three sons, who listen to names of Petronius, Lucius Apuleius and Dionysus. And miss her mor. That’s because 2008 died in Bombay, in lobby of famous Taj Mahal Palace. When she had just ordered a cucumber sandwich re, suicide bombers stormed hotel.
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But why did gold leave country immediately? Just out of mourning? The last novel third deals with this mystery in style of a crime story, after all, Nero has long been a big number in Indian mafia. And it turns out that he is culpable–in a tragic way–guilty of brutal fate that only his wife, n his sons, and finally his own. Money laundering, Bollywood and religious displacement of country play an important role in this. Inevitable will be disaster only by Russian gymnast, who gets to know Nero in shameful circumstances in Miami and quickly marries to horror of his sons. Vasilisa combines silhouette of a super model with wickedness of Baba Jaga.
Golden House is a intricately nested, gloomy, yet exciting novel with innumerable references to literature and film history. It can be read as an apocalyptic grotesque from a seamed America. Or much more fundamentally: as a meditation on unsolved puzzles of Greek tragedy. Can an escape ever succeed? How relentless is fate, how free man? Quite apart from his literature: in face of curse, which is so terribly burdened with Rushdie life, se questions sound more urgent to him than to any or writer.
Salman Rushdie: Golden House novel; A. D. v. Sabine getting; Verlag c. Bertelsmann, München 2017; 512 pp., 25, – €, as e-book €19.99
