Salman Rushdie’s Novels in the Perspectives of Postmodernism in the Third Millennium

Ivan Ivanov
Sofia University

https://doi.org/10.53656/for2024-01-06

Abstract. The text is dedicated to the novels of Salman Rushdie, one of the world's novelists of the third millennium, who preserve the importance and significance of postmodern fiction. Different novels from different decades are presented that employ a variety of postmodern practices and forms such as intertextuality, metafiction, heteroglossia, remitification, parody and the grotesque. The author builds a colorful world in which images and plots from the dynamic present, but also historical and mythological creatures and heroes are intertwined. Main attention is focused on the novel Quixote, which follows the lives of the fictional Quixote and Sancho in the very real American world. With a colorful palette of fantastic creatures, but also real characters from different eras, the author raises pressing issues about racism, consumer gluttony and obsession with the media spectacle. A brief review of the latest novel, Victory City, with which the author returns to India, building a magical, magnetic, fairy-tale world in which „the conventions of the outside world lose their meaning and melt away”, but at the same time references are made to reality. In conclusion, the importance of Salman Rushdie as a global and postmodern author is reaffirmed.
Keywords: novel; literature, postmodernism; rhizomatic; metafiction; parody; grotesque; intertextuality

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