This book is interesting to anyone who wants to know what Salman Rushdie has published since the date of the fatwa.

Madelena Gonzalez, author of "Fiction After the Fatwa: Salman Rushdie and the Charm of Catastrophe", writes in her book the thesis from which the book will develop:


 "The starting point for this study is an examination of what Rushdie has achieved as a writer since the fourteenth of February 1989¹, an attempt at appraisal, but also a case for a transgressive aesthetics which seems increasingly viable as a description of his contribution to literature²."


 ¹ The day of the fatwa pronounced by Ayatollah Khomeini.
 ² The preoccupation with transgression is particularly evident in the title essay of Rushdie's recent "Step Across This Line: Collected Non-Fiction 1992-2002", London: Jonathan Cape, 2002, 407-42.


We can find an AUTHORISED PREVIEW OF THE BOOK by Madelena Gonzalez here (visited in November 2008), and a SUMMARY OF THE BOOK BY CHAPTERS made by Claire Pégon here (visited in November 2008).

Here (date of last visit: November 2008) is a review in amazon.com:

 "Fiction after the Fatwa: Salman Rushdie and the Charm of Catastrophe proposes for the first time an examination of what Rushdie has achieved as a writer since the fourteenth of February 1989, the date of the fatwa. This study argues that his constant questioning of fictional form and the language used to articulate it have opened up new opportunities and further possibilities for writing in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Through close readings and intensive textual analysis, arranged chronologically, Fiction after the Fatwa provides a thought-provoking reflection on the writer’s achievements over the last thirteen years. Aimed principally at academics and students, but also of interest to the general reader, it engages with the specific nature of the post-fatwa fiction as it moves from the fairy-tale world of Haroun and the Sea of Stories to the heartbreaking post-realism of Fury."



©Madelena GONZALEZ, "Fiction after the Fatwa : Salman Rushdie and the Charm of Catastrophe" (80,000 words, 262 pages), Amsterdam-New York, NY : Rodopi, 2005, Checked in November 2008.

©Claire PÉGON, « Madelena Gonzalez. Fiction after the Fatwa - Salman Rushdie and the Charm of Catastrophe », E-rea, 3.2 | 2005, [En ligne], mis en ligne le 15 octobre 2005. URL: http://erea.revues.org/index571.html. Consulté le 04 novembre 2008.


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