East, West - Softcover

Rushdie, Salman

3.56

7,543 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0394281500 ISBN 13: 9780394281506

Publisher: VINTAGE CANADA, 1996

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In this brilliant collection - his first major work of fiction since The Satanic Verses - one of the great writers in the world today gives us nine stories that together reveal the intricate intimacies and unbridgeable distances between the East and the West. A rickshaw driver dreams of being a Bombay movie star while, in a futuristic Western dystopia, legendary Hollywood icons acquire magic powers. Indian diplomats who as childhood friends hatched "Star Trek" fantasies must boldly go into a hidden universe of conspiracy and violence; and Hamlet's jester, too, is caught up in murderous intrigues. In Rushdie's hybrid world, an Indian guru can be a red-headed Welshman, while Christopher Columbus is an immigrant, dreaming of Western glory. A young Pakistani woman faces a journey to England to meet the husband she does not know; an elderly Indian lady in London must choose between love and home. With profound sensitivity, Rushdie allows himself, like his characters, to be pulled now in one direction, now in another. Yet throughout this collection he remains, really, a writer who insists on our cultural complexity; who confidently rises beyond ideology, refusing to choose between East and West.

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Product Description:

This dazzling collection of short stories explores the allure and confusion of what happens when East meets West.

Fantasy and realism collide as a rickshaw driver writes letters home describing his film star career in Bombay; a mispronunciation leads to romance and an unusual courtship in sixties London; two childhood friends turned diplomats live out fantasies hatched by Star Trek; and Christopher Columbus dreams of consummating his relationship with Queen Isabella. With one foot in the East and one foot in the West, this collection reveals the oceanic distances and the unexpected intimacies between the two.

Review:

"One of the decade's great literary triumphs: magical, compassionate, wise, beautiful, and so very entertaining." Toronto Star
"Richly imaginative....The characters are memorable, the language swift, and the reader is touched by desire, friendship and love." The Globe and Mail
"A pleasure to read....The stories in East, West have the careful precision of ivory miniatures. And all of them, beneath their infectiously playful surfaces ponder the imponderables of human fate." Macleans's
"Poignant and intimate.... Mr. Rushdie, one suspects, would rather have his work discussed purely as literature, without reference to the unhappy history that has plagued him, but sometimes the stories themselves make it difficult to ignore the story of their author." The New York Times
"Above all is the range and versatility of Rushdie's use of language, from tightly controlled to dazzlingly free, from mock-Shakespeare to mimic-Indian. More than any other English writer, Rushdie makes the page sing with his prose." The Washington Post

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