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Salman Rushdie is one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year • “Victory City is a triumph—not because it exists, but because it is utterly enchanting.”—The Atlantic
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Chicago Public Library, Polygon, The Globe and Mail, Bookreporter
In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga—“victory city”—the wonder of the world.
Over the next 250 years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from its literal sowing from a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry—with Pampa Kampana at its center.
Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, Victory City is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is in itself a testament to the power of storytelling.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 7, 2023 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593677452
- File size: 339972 KB
- Duration: 11:48:16
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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February 27, 2023
Rushdie (Midnight’s Children) conjures a rich if undercooked story of a doomed empire and its creator, a woman who lived to be 247. A Sanskrit manuscript is found buried in a clay pot in present-day southern India. On it is a narrative poem by Pampa Kampana, who, as a child in the 14th century, is granted magical abilities by a goddess to empower women. After nine silent years in a cave, Pampa is visited by two soldiers turned cowherds. Pampa hands them a sack of seeds and instructs them to “grow a city.” Through their work, Pampa conjures the city of Bisnaga, where people are “born full-grown from the brown earth.” Though Bisnaga’s palace guards are strong and noble women, the male soldiers sent out to conquer the surrounding lands are greedy and ruthless. Having taken a turn away from the promise early on of a feminine utopia, the novel grows ponderous with yet another story of violent, narrow-minded men. Still, there’s plenty of clever commentary on human corruption and religious purity (“In this way Pampa learned the lesson every creator must learn, even God himself. Once you had created your characters, you had to be bound by their choices”). Fans of Rushdie’s magical realism and narrative trickery will find much to admire, even if this won’t be remembered as one of his better works. -
June 10, 2024
Pampa Kampana, a nine-year-old girl in 14th-century India, witnesses her mother die in a fiery blaze. Her namesake goddess then enters Pampa's body and directs her life for the next 247 years. Pampa is given a bag of seeds from which she grows Victory City and all the region's inhabitants. The newly created people don't know who they are, so Pampa whispers into their ears and supplies them with roles and backstories that give them a sense of their history and lineage. The question of who will rule the city arises almost immediately, and while Pampa struggles to create a world where women and men are equal and where tolerance is the rule, her plans are thwarted at every turn. Rushdie's story is hauntingly familiar, mimicking the path of most known civilizations from birth to death. The inevitability of the outcome, even when a goddess is in charge, warns of the future of the current version of civilization. VERDICT Narrator Sid Sagar imbues Rushdie's (The Golden House) tale with a spellbinding atmosphere of magic and wonder, skillfully capturing the novel's many characters and channeling Rushdie's sly humor and insight. Rushdie's many fans will be enthralled.--Joanna M. Burkhardt
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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