Salman Rushdie - Victory City (Jonathan Cape, 2023) ***

Salman Rushdie keeps writing. That is the good news after the attack he suffered last year. And Salman Rushdie keeps re-inventing himself in the process. Fantasy and mythical contexts have always been present in his novels - think of Midnight's Children for instance - but with Victory City he goes all the way into a fantasy world, where magic seeds can create a whole city, where people live and deal with each other like gods, demons and figures from legends. 

Of course the whole story is an allegory for today's world, with its sectarian perspectives, its power-hungry politicians, its bellicose leaders ... The downside of the fantasy characters is that they are too far removed from the real world that it is hard to empathise with any of them. They are puppets in a puppet show, which you watch from a distance, and you are watching a plot that really could go into any direction: with fantasy everything is possible, with no recourse to an internal logic or necessity. 

This is not my cup of tea. It is well written, for sure, but the universe created by Rushdie does not resonate with me. I hope it will resonate with you.