Salman Rushdie releases new book 'Victory City' six months after knife attack

Salman Rushdie, the India-born British author who suffered a knife attack on August 12 last year while delivering a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in New York, has published a new novel titled Victory City. The novel an 'epic tale' centred around a nine-year-old girl in 14th Century southern India who defies patriarchy to rule Bisnaga—“a victory city”—described as the wonder of the entire world, is Rushdie's first novel since the knife attack.  

Victory City opens with the final day in the life of a 247-year-old blind poet Pampa Kampana, who buried an epic poem, the Jayaparajaya [that translates to victory and defeat] which hides a secret of a future world in a clay pot. Rushdie, in the triumphant tale, plays the Sutradhar [tranlsates from Sanskrit to thread-holder]. “[I’m] the humble author,” he says in the book, adding that he is "neither a scholar nor a poet but merely a spinner of yarns.”

Protagonist Kampana, the scholar, resurrects an empire that resembles South India's Vijayanagara which existed in the 15th and 16th centuries and is widely known for rebellions against Tughluq rule in the Deccan between [1336-1565]. Rushdie's Victory City invokes The Enchantress of Florence [2008] which is also set against the backdrop of rich historical heritage. 

Here are the US and UK editions! US publication date: February 7th. UK on February 9th. Not long now. pic.twitter.com/RBPXyLIKeg

— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) January 14, 2023

A divine encounter with goddess Parvati

Kampana, the then nine-year-old girl has had a divine encounter that changes the course of history. She becomes the mouthpiece for the Indian Goddess Parvati and breathes a fantastical empire into existence after being granted god's own powers. Goddess Parvati, the reincarnation of Sati, is known in Indian culture as the wife of the powerful Hindu god Lord Shiva. The grief-stricken girl witnessed the tragic death of her mother and later transforms into a vessel for Goddess Parvati in Rushdie's new enthralling book filled with faction rivalries, wars, and coups.

The Hindu heaven of Svarga in Rushdie's masterpiece is keen to the Game of Thrones’ King’s Landing. Rushdie's protagonist, despite her gender, isn't denied a chance to be a monarch; the role she admits in the book, she had "wanted most of all”.

Rushdie's 15th novel becomes instrumental in the rise of a great city's ruler as the ancient epic entwined with the historical, cultural, and symbolic resurrection seeks to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. The brilliantly styled traditional saga's plot unravels the abridged translation of demigod Kampana's epic poem. Rushdie's Victory City is described as a testament to the power of storytelling abound in adventure and Indian mythology. A translation of the original 24,000 verses was written in Sanskrit, alternating between the Mahabharata and the Hindu mythology. 

The book is a "literal sowing out of a bag of magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the hubris of those in power, a magical-realist feminist tale in a historical setting," according to UK's English Heritage. 

Author Salman Rushdie tended to last year after he was attacked during a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, NY, about 75 miles (120 km) south of Buffalo. Credit: AP/Joshua Goodman

The book's announcement came around the time that the 75-year-old Rushdie was stabbed in the neck by a 24-year-old assaulter identified as Hadi Matar, of Fairview, New Jersey, before his scheduled lecture. Matar has since pleaded not guilty to attempted murder in the second-degree, and second-degree assault. Rushdie's literary agent Andrew Wylie, said in a statement that the author has sustained "profound wounds, and he’s [also] lost the sight of one eye".

"He [Rushdie] had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack," Wylie said. Rushdie has since been recovering from his injuries. Wylie, at the time, had noted, that the most important thing was that the writer "was going to live."