You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
silea 's review for:
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
by Salman Rushdie
This was my first Rushdie book.
I try, at times, to expand my horizons by reading books outside my genre, authors outside my preferences, and so on. Rushdie is a well-respected author that i normally wouldn't touch because he's well within the lit/fic shelving, which isn't my native habitat. However, the blurb on this story got me: the offspring of a jinn/human couple a thousand years ago being called into action when the veil between worlds tatters? Now THAT is up my alley.
Alas, the whole Jinn vs Human vs Jinn-human-hybrid story is just a scaffold for the author to espouse various philosophical theories and political stances. It's story in support of philosophy, an overly-wordy offspring of Plato's works, wherein the story only exists to to demonstrate a philosophical position.
I'm not impugning Rushdie's prose - in the hands of a lesser author, i'd have given up on this book very quickly and given it a one-star rating without any hesitation. It is, in fact, only his fantastic wordsmithing that saves this book from being utter tripe. The repeated themes of men taking advantage of younger women, jinn being entirely focused on sex, men leaving their wives for younger women, etc etc etc... it's the sort of one-track-mind issue that makes one uncomfortably suspicious about the author's personal life.
I know the major problem here is that i'm not the intended audience of this book. Lit/fic is not my thing, even if it's dressed up in spec-fic clothing. However, no matter the genre or plot, there were fundamental elements of this book that left me rolling my eyes and muttering imprecations about how old men dominate publishing.
I try, at times, to expand my horizons by reading books outside my genre, authors outside my preferences, and so on. Rushdie is a well-respected author that i normally wouldn't touch because he's well within the lit/fic shelving, which isn't my native habitat. However, the blurb on this story got me: the offspring of a jinn/human couple a thousand years ago being called into action when the veil between worlds tatters? Now THAT is up my alley.
Alas, the whole Jinn vs Human vs Jinn-human-hybrid story is just a scaffold for the author to espouse various philosophical theories and political stances. It's story in support of philosophy, an overly-wordy offspring of Plato's works, wherein the story only exists to to demonstrate a philosophical position.
I'm not impugning Rushdie's prose - in the hands of a lesser author, i'd have given up on this book very quickly and given it a one-star rating without any hesitation. It is, in fact, only his fantastic wordsmithing that saves this book from being utter tripe. The repeated themes of men taking advantage of younger women, jinn being entirely focused on sex, men leaving their wives for younger women, etc etc etc... it's the sort of one-track-mind issue that makes one uncomfortably suspicious about the author's personal life.
I know the major problem here is that i'm not the intended audience of this book. Lit/fic is not my thing, even if it's dressed up in spec-fic clothing. However, no matter the genre or plot, there were fundamental elements of this book that left me rolling my eyes and muttering imprecations about how old men dominate publishing.