Salman Rushdie : Re-Telling History Through Fiction

Contents: 1. Introduction: history-fiction nexus. 2. Political history. 3. Authorial intrusions. 4. Public mores. 5. Geographical and literary lineage. 6. Conclusion: historical cornucopia. Bibliography.

"The present book is a critical and comprehensive study of the history-fiction nexus in the works of Salman Rushdie. It presents a ground-breaking analysis of Rushdie\'s use of postmodernist techniques, focusing on his depiction of history against a vibrant backdrop of geography, politics, literature and language. It maps the connection between text and context, interrogating the constructed images for their ideological contents in the novels of Salman Rushdie. Under the theoretical framework of magic realism, intertextuality, historiography and deconstruction, the book brings to focus the mysterious relationship between reality and truth. This offers a fresh insight to the existing discourse about Rushdie\'s historico-political strand of writing. As the title suggests, this study focuses on representations of history in the works of Salman Rushdie. History in its varied forms, not only of politics, is focused and is the main thrust area of the book. It begins by exploring the nexus between history and fiction through the ages up to the postmodern and postcolonial era. This relationship between history and fiction forms the basis of various histories that are represented in the novels of Rushdie. Rushdie filters the world history, the national history, invasions and explorations and the postcolonial treatment of colonial power--all in his works. The present  book, thus, is an attempt to bring forth various histories with the help of different theories, work on their relevance and draw out their inter-relatedness." (jacket)