Moraes Zogoiby, nicknamed the Moor, is the son of a Catholic heiress to a Cochin pepper fortune and a Jewish clerk who becomes a Bombay crime lord. Born with a clubbed hand and a body that ages at double speed, he narrates the rise and decline of his family from a hiding place in Spain, beginning with spice-trade feuds and ending in the communal politics of 1990s Bombay.
At the centre is his mother Aurora, a brilliant and imperious painter whose canvases turn the family saga into myth, linking it to Boabdil, the last Moorish sultan of Granada. Around her swirl lovers, rival artists, a Hindu nationalist party boss modelled on real figures, and a Bombay that is losing its cosmopolitan tolerance.
Rushdie's first full novel after the fatwa is ornate, comic and elegiac, and it mourns the loss of a mixed, plural India. It won the Whitbread Novel Award in 1995 and was shortlisted for the Booker. Readers who loved Midnight's Children will recognise the energy, darkened by exile.
Book details
| Author | Salman Rushdie |
|---|---|
| First published | 1995 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Literary fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 434 |
| Setting | Cochin, Bombay and Andalusia, Spain, late 19th century to 1990s |
| Awards | Whitbread Novel Award 1995 |
Themes
- Pluralism
- Art and power
- Mothers and sons
- Communalism
- Exile
Who should read it
Fans of maximalist family sagas who want Rushdie's most personal lament for cosmopolitan Bombay.