Fury: A Novel (Modern Library) - Softcover

Rushdie, Salman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679783504 ISBN 13: 9780679783503

Publisher: Random House Inc, 2002

Synopsis

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK

"Salman Rushdie's great grasp of the human tragicomedy-its dimensions, its absurdities and horrors-has made him one of the most intelligent fiction writers in the English language."
-Gail Caldwell, The Boston Globe

"Fury is a profoundly, ecstatically affirmative work of fiction. It reaffirms Rushdie's standing . . . at the very front rank of contemporary literary novelists."
-Baltimore Sun

Malik Solanka, historian of ideas and world-famous dollmaker, steps out of his life one day, abandons his family in London without a word of explanation, and flees for New York. There's a fury within him, and he fears he has become dangerous to those he loves. He arrives in New York at a time of unprecedented plenty, in the highest hour of America's wealth and power, seeking to "erase" himself. But fury is all around him. An astonishing work of explosive energy, Fury is by turns a pitiless and pitch-black comedy, a love story of mesmerizing force, and a disturbing inquiry into the darkest side of human nature.

"Rushdie's ideas-about society, about culture, about politics-are embedded in his stories and in the interlocking momentum with which he tells them. . . . All of Rushdie's synthesizing energy, the way he brings together ancient myth and old story, contemporary incident and archetypal emotion, transfigures reason into a waking dream."
-Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Well, here it is, then, his first 3-D, full-volume American novel, finger-snapping, wildly stupefying, often slyly funny, red-blooded and red-toothed. [Fury] twinkles brightly in tragicomic passages."
-The Miami Herald

Cover design:
Cover illustration:

About this title

Review:

Even before it published, Salman Rushdie's novel Fury was the subject of controversy. Holland's literary community was livid that a novel written by a non-Dutch writer was funded by their government. Rushdie watchers will spend column inches playing "spot the unmistakable biographical references": the main character Malik Solanka is a 55-year-old Indian professor; he later comes to live in England and flees to New York, leaving his wife and young son; in America, he falls for the beautiful Neela, clearly modelled on Rushdie's partner. However, tempting as it may be to focus on the circumstances of a book, rather than the text alone, ultimately it is the prose that must speak for itself.

The Fury of the title refers both to the mid-life rage of the protagonist, who finds himself standing over his sleeping wife and son armed with a kitchen knife, and the mythological furies who tore to pieces those men whom the gods had judged. As in his previous novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet, he explores the relationship of the artist to his creation and to his audience. Solanka--Cambridge philosopher, doll-maker and possible serial killer--is the unlikely and unwilling creator of a pop-culture phenomenon that comes to represent everything he despises about modern cultural malaise. He is a part-creator of a culture he hardly understands--an anachronism. The novelist's prose reflects this alienation, but unfortunately with few insights or pleasures for the reader used to his contemporary mythological lyricism. Rushdie's pop references check-list the late 20th-century US from Clinton to OJ to the World Wide Web, and this, combined with their built-in obsolescence, renders Solanka/Rushdie's narrative strained. The urban culture of New York and Webspeak provide rich seams of traditional and new vocabularies and grammar for this most magpie-like of playful language lovers to line his literary nest with. However, in so doing, he cuts himself off from the emotional intensity and drive, combined with layered cultural complexity, that has distinguished his work, the most celebrated being Midnight's Children. Rushdie at his best is an intriguing writer; ultimately, it may be easier to extract him from the media circus that surrounds him than from the comparisons with his own compelling body of work. --Fiona Buckland

Review:

"Salman Rushdie's great grasp of the human tragicomedy--its dimensions, its absurdities and horrors--has made him one of the most intelligent fiction writers in the English language."
--Gail Caldwell, The Boston Globe

"Fury is a profoundly, ecstatically affirmative work of fiction. It reaffirms Rushdie's standing, in my opinion, at the very front rank of contemporary literary novelists."
--Michael Pakenham, Baltimore Sun

"Rushdie's ideas--about society, about culture, about politics--are embedded in his stories and in the interlocking momentum with which he tells them. His reflective power lies in the way his fiction simply unfolds. All of Rushdie's synthesizing energy, the way he brings together ancient myth and old story, contemporary incident and archetypal emotion, transfigures reason into a waking dream."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Well, here it is, then, his first 3-D, full-volume American novel, finger-snapping, wildly stupefying, often slyly funny, red-blooded and red-toothed. [Fury] twinkles brightly in tragicomic passages."
--The Miami Herald

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0679783504
• ISBN 13: 9780679783503
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272