British writer Salman Rushdie is releasing a new novel, six months after being stabbed in the United States. It is called “Victory City”. It is the “epic story of a woman” in the 14th century who will erect a city, suffer exile and threats in a patriarchal world.
Completed before his stabbing, this novel by the author of Indian origin is presented as the translation of the historical epic of Pampa Kampana, a young orphan endowed with magical powers by a goddess, who creates the city of Bisnaga, literally Victory City.
The writer will not make any promotion to present his 15th novel which will be released on Tuesday in the United States and Thursday in the United Kingdom, warned his agent Andrew Wylie in the British daily The Guardian, even if “his recovery is progressing” since the attack which nearly cost him his life on August 12, 2022. A young man had thrown himself on him armed with a knife as he was about to speak at a conference in Chautauqua in the northwest of New York State, near Great Lake Erie. Rushdie, a naturalized American who has lived in New York for 20 years, has lost the sight of one eye and the use of one hand, his agent announced in October.
“Words are the only victors”
The attack shocked Western countries, but was hailed by extremists in Muslim countries such as Iran and Pakistan. Since then, the author has stayed away from the media but started speaking again in December on the social network. Twitter, most often to relay the reviews of his new novel published in the press. However, several events are planned to accompany the release of “Victory City”, such as a conference broadcast on the internet with British authors Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman.
Icon of freedom of expression since living under the influence of a fatwa, a decision taken by a religious authority of Islam, for the writing of the book “Satanic Verses” in 1988, Rushdie still defends the power of words in “Victory City”. With the mission of “giving women an equal place in a patriarchal world”, according to the summary of its publisher Penguin Random House, its heroine and poet Pampa Kampana, who lives nearly 250 years, is also the witness of “the pride of those in power”, and witnessed the rise and then the destruction of Bisnaga. Her legacy to the world, however, remains her epic tale, which she buries as a message for future generations. And the novel ends with this sentence: “Words are the only winners”.
In the New York Times, American writer Colum McCann, a friend of Rushdie, claims that the author “says something very profound” in his latest book. “He says vou can never take away people’s basic ability to tell stories. In the face of danger, even in the face of death, he manages to say that all we have is the power to tell stories”.
Born in Bombay in 1947, Rushdie published his first novel ‘Grimus’ in 1975 and rose to world stardom six years later with ‘The Midnight Children’ which won him the Booker Prize in the UK. “Victory City” will be released in September in France under its original title, indicates its French publishing house Actes Sud.