Stranger Gods - Salman Rushdie's Other Worlds (Paperback)

A wide-ranging study of Salman Rushdie's seven published novels, with a special focus on his earliest, Grimus, and his most powerful and provocative, Midnight's Children, Shame and The Satanic Verses. Roger Clark shows how Rushdie employs cosmology, mythology and mysticism to structure otherworldly dramas that are fascinating in their own right, as well as crucial to the more worldly points Rushdie makes about literary tradition, history, ethnicity, and the politics of religion. Clark's exploration of Rushdie's novels works on at least three levels. Firstly, he clarifies and interprets Rushdie's often puzzling references to figures such as Loki and Shiva, settings such as the mountains of Qaf and Kailasa, and experiences such as the annihilation of the self and the temptations of the Muslim Devil, Iblis. Secondly, he demonstrates how otherworldy motifs work with or against each other, fusing or clashing with Dantean, Shakespearean, and other literary forms to create hybrid characters, plots and themes.