#pampa kampana

[zelihatrifles]

Victory City

The latest Salman Rushdie, and the more potent when you know that his life has been made an attempt on already, and that he survives like the fighter he is. In this epic novel, because it's more epic than novel actually, he writes of the rise and downfall of a whole empire. You may even say, garnering similarities with his narrative, okay, Pampa Kampana's narrative, and with the nonsensical atrocities that are happening today, that his voice has prophetic overtones. Because:

'Anyway,' she wrote, it's good to learn that over there is not so very unlike over here, and that human intelligence and human stupidity, as well as human nature, the best and worst of it, are the greatest constants of the changing world.'

And right she is. Not only over there and over here, but also then and now. Then, the Remonstrance was fighting to get back old familiar names of streets because the rulers were changing their names to make them starkly religious, and i hardly need to point out why i mention this. Rushdie's epic prose takes you right back to this divine muse-inspired Pampa Kampana and her magical abilities which she revered as well as was weary of. You travel a long way but you don't get a prediction as to how our civilisation would really end, because, as Rushdie states:

Words are the only victors.

#books #reading #currently reading #epic #modern epic #postcolonial literature #magic realism #modernist literature #modernism #salman rushdie #victory city #pampa kampana #impressions not reviews

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #13 – Victory City by Salman Rushdie

One of my goals for the year is to read more proper literature (here defined as fiction I can mention reading to my mother without getting judged for it). I’ve never read anything of Rushdie’s before, but I did remember his name in the news recently due to the whole attempted-murder thing and, happily, my library actually had a copy of his newest work. So, picked this up and read it sight unseen!

The book follows one Pampa Kampana – a nine-year-old girl who, in the 14th century, witnesses her city destroyed, and her mother burning herself alive. She is then inhabited and blessed by a goddess, blessed/cursed with a lifespan measured in centuries and the destiny of raising an empire up and seeing it fall before she dies.

The narrative is framed as a modern adaptation/summary of the epic poem recounting her life Pampa completes before finally dying, finally discovered and translated after being forgotten in the ruins of te imperial capital for centuries. The story is largely a story of this miraculous, semi-utopian empire, as told Pampa’s eyes (and with a lengthy digression during the years she spends in exile).

This is a story that exists somewhere in the muddy middle ground between historical low fantasy and magical realism – it’s in some sense an alternate history of the Vijayanagara Empire, and replete with historical trivia and references, but is quite clear from the outset that accuracy is not really something the book cares about. Instead, the book’s Vijayanagara – always written as Bisnaga, as it was translated by a historical Portuguese chronicler whose also a minor character in the story, to prevent confusion – is basically allegory and morality tale with a light coating of history for flavour.

Not that I can really begrudge Rushdie for his strident politics (as far as I can tell I basically agree with him on all of it), but this really does feel like one of those old fantastical utopias, or a political treatise that gets past the censors by pretending to be the history of a foreign country, more than it does a novel. Which could definitely work! But in this case really didn’t, at least for me. There’s enough time spent on characterization and character drama to eat up pages, but not enough for it to ever feel like they’re people and not just marionettes acting out a show. I suppose the best way to get across the reading experience is that I was reading a proper 500 page history book at the same time as I read this, and this felt like the bigger slog by far.

Though part of that might just be disappointed expectations that I really had no right to have in the first place? As I said, I had Rushdie slotted in my head as a literary author, but really I don’t know nearly enough about him or his work to justify that. So I came to this expecting to be at least a bit wowed and bedazzled by the artistry and beautiful prose on display – and like, eh? Not bad, to be sure, the narrative voice and the framing device are both fun and fairly well done. But having read it there’s really not a single passage or sequence I can say has stuck with me.

The comparison that comes to mind is Kalpa Imperial by Angélica Gorodischer, which is also a book-length epic history of a fantastical empire that never was which laughs at all conventional wisdom about pacing, characterization and plot (and which also has been shelved as magical realism for what are basically reasons genre snobbery imo). It’s been a few years since I read it, but from what I recall that agreed with me far more. Maybe just because it abandoned the conceit of a single protagonist and family melodrama entirely, or maybe because it had a bit more subtle in its social commentary (or maybe it was just better written on a sentence-to-sentence level).

Though I should say, there’s every possibility I’m being a bit harsher on this than it entirely deserves – it’s an entirely competent book! The politics are blatant but like a) they’re politics I agree with and b) they’re nowhere near the most blatant or forced-feeling inclusion of progressive politics in fiction I’ve seen recently. However, this is also a piece of writing that’s among other things very clearly and directly about how important and sublime and world-changing the art of writing is. Which is like a movie about making it in showbuisness, or a musical about how great singing is. Automatic deduction of a full letter grade.

#book review #victory city #salman rushdie #literature

[moonshinemagpie]

"On the last day of her life, when she was two hundred and forty-­seven years old, the blind poet, miracle worker, and prophetess Pampa Kampana completed her immense narrative poem about Bisnaga and buried it in a clay pot sealed with wax in the heart of the ruined Royal Enclosure, as a message to the future. Four and a half centuries later we found that pot and read for the first time the immortal masterpiece named the Jayaparajaya, meaning “Victory and Defeat,” written in the Sanskrit language, as long as the Ramayana, made up of twenty-­four thousand verses, and we learned the secrets of the empire she had concealed from history for more than one hundred and sixty thousand days."

Salman Rushdie really just started his most recent novel with this, like damn

#salman rushdie #victory city

[justforbooks]

If there was a competition for the best pastiche of the opening words of a Salman Rushdie novel, a pretty good entry might be: “On the last day of her life, when she was two hundred and forty-seven years old, the blind poet, miracle worker and prophetess Pampa Kampana completed her immense narrative poem about Bisnaga”. By coincidence, these are also the opening words of Victory City, a book Rushdie finished shortly before last summer’s tragic stabbing. 

From there, he goes on to retell the events laid out in Pampa’s poem—and to prove all over again that nobody else writes novels quite like this, where history and magic realism are perfectly intertwined. 

Bisnaga, for example, was a real Indian city that between the 14th and 16th centuries became one of the grandest in the world. On the other hand, it seems a safe bet that it didn’t come into existence, as it does here, when a goddess-inspired prophetess told two cowherds to scatter seeds on the ground. Or that once these instantly grew into an urban wonder, she whispered to the newly fledged inhabitants the stories of their lives and families, and of the city’s past.

Either way, soon afterwards, one of the cowherds crowns himself king and Bisnaga’s cycle of greatness and decline begins. Among much else, Rushdie gives us talking monkeys, people transformed into birds and Pampa’s own ability to live for centuries without much ageing. But we also get plenty of recognisable politics as the city flourishes when at its most tolerant and falls apart whenever a ruler decides that religion means only that “we are good, they are bad”. Meanwhile, for all the strangeness of the magic bits, Rushdie is as impressive as ever at such traditional literary satisfactions as beautiful pacing and vivid, unforgettable characters.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #salman rushdie #victory city #book review

[blogsdaseguire]

La città della vittoria

Pampa Kampana, una semi-Dea destinata a vivere oltre 250 anni, crea dal nulla una città che sarà capitale di un Impero grande e fragile. Bisnaga, la città stato, nei suoi sogni è ricca di #cultura e inclusiva. Per gli uomini regnanti conta solo il potere.

La città della vittoria di Salman Rushdie non è propriamente il mio genere letterario e durante la lettura delle prime pagine ho pensato che lo avrei abbandonato. Troppo ‘fantasy‘ per i miei gusti. Per fortuna sono andato avanti perché superato il primo scoglio iniziale ho letto un libro interessante, ben scritto e dalla trama molto pratica, nonostante l’ambientazione di fantasia. La città della…

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#Salman Rushdie

[frstndlstlns]

Victory City

On the last day of her life, when she was two hundred and forty-seven years old, the blind poet, miracle worker, and prophetess Pampa Kampana completed her immense narrative poem about Bisnaga and buried it in a clay pot sealed with wax in the heart of the ruined Royal Enclosure, as a message to the future.

Words are the only victors.

— Salman Rushdie

#i built this city #politics #ethics #fiction #2023

[thereisnopartofwoman]

Radha Kampana, her mother walked to join the bonfire of the dead, without even saying goodbye. For rest of her life Pampa Kampana, who shared a name with the river on whose banks all this happened, would carry the scent of her mother's burning flesh in her nostrils. Arjuna Kampana had died so long ago that Pampa had no memory of his face.

[762175]

Salman Rushdie's magical new novel 'Victory City' contains 'the wisdom of a lifetime'

Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN Keeping you in the know, Culture Queue is an ongoing series of recommendations for timely books to read, films to watch and podcasts and music to listen to. The story of Pampa Kampana, poet, prophet and mother of the empire of Bisnaga, begins with fire. Salman Rushdie’s protagonist in his new novel “Victory City” — a fictional retelling of the fallen Indian empire…

View On WordPress

[cryptoguys657]

Salman Rushdie's magical new novel 'Victory City' contains 'the wisdom of a lifetime'

Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN Keeping you in the know, Culture Queue is an ongoing series of recommendations for timely books to read, films to watch and podcasts and music to listen to. The story of Pampa Kampana, poet, prophet and mother of the empire of Bisnaga, begins with fire. Salman Rushdie’s protagonist in his new novel “Victory City” — a fictional retelling of the fallen Indian empire…

View On WordPress

[mubashirnews]

Salman Rushdie's magical new novel 'Victory City' contains 'the wisdom of a lifetime'

Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN Keeping you in the know, Culture Queue is an ongoing series of recommendations for timely books to read, films to watch and podcasts and music to listen to. The story of Pampa Kampana, poet, prophet and mother of the empire of Bisnaga, begins with fire. Salman Rushdie’s protagonist in his new novel “Victory City” — a fictional retelling of the fallen Indian empire…

View On WordPress

[cryptosecrets]

Salman Rushdie's magical new novel 'Victory City' contains 'the wisdom of a lifetime'

Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN Keeping you in the know, Culture Queue is an ongoing series of recommendations for timely books to read, films to watch and podcasts and music to listen to. The story of Pampa Kampana, poet, prophet and mother of the empire of Bisnaga, begins with fire. Salman Rushdie’s protagonist in his new novel “Victory City” — a fictional retelling of the fallen Indian empire…

View On WordPress

[gamegill]

Salman Rushdie's magical new novel 'Victory City' contains 'the wisdom of a lifetime'

Written by Jacqui Palumbo, CNN Keeping you in the know, Culture Queue is an ongoing series of recommendations for timely books to read, films to watch and podcasts and music to listen to. The story of Pampa Kampana, poet, prophet and mother of the empire of Bisnaga, begins with fire. Salman Rushdie’s protagonist in his new novel “Victory City” — a fictional retelling of the fallen Indian empire…

View On WordPress

[thereisnopartofwoman]

The epic tale if a woman who breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by it over the centuries -- from the transcendent imagination of Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie.

Pampa Kampana's narrative poem about Bisnaga. Jayaprajaya, meaning 'Victory and Defeat' Bisnaga Empire was reborn as it truly had been, its women warriors,its mountain of gold