Haroun and the Sea of Stories [Paperback]

Salman Rushdie (Author)

Book Description

The author of The Satanic Verses returns with his most humorous and accessible novel yet. This is the story of Haroun, a 12-year-old boy whose father Rashid is the greatest storyteller in a city so sad that it has forgotten its name. When the gift of gab suddenly deserts Rashid, Haroun sets out on an adventure to rescue his print.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Immediately forget any preconceptions you may have about Salman Rushdie and the controversy that has swirled around his million-dollar head. You should instead know that he is one of the best contemporary writers of fables and parables, from any culture. Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a delightful tale about a storyteller who loses his skill and a struggle against mysterious forces attempting to block the seas of inspiration from which all stories are derived. Here's a representative passage about the sources and power of inspiration:

So Iff the water genie told Haroun about the Ocean of the Stream of Stories, and even though he was full of a sense of hopelessness and failure the magic of the Ocean began to have an effect on Haroun. He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity; and Iff explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories; so that unlike a library of books, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was much more than a storeroom of yarns. It was not dead, but alive.

"And if you are very, very careful, or very, very highly skilled, you can dip a cup into the Ocean," Iff told Haroun, "like so," and here he produced a little golden cup from another of his waistcoat pockets, "and you can fill it with water from a single, pure Stream of Story, like so," as he did precisely that.

From Publishers Weekly

In a contemporary fable filled with riotous verbal pranks, Haroun, who unintentionally stopped time when he froze his father's esteemed storytelling ability, seeks to undo his error on a quest through a magical realm. "As eloquent a defense of art as any Renaissance treatise . . . saturated with the hyperreal color of such classic fantasies as The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland ," said PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics); First edition (November 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140157379
• ISBN-13: 978-0140157376
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (138 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,583 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Celebrating the magic of fiction, January 19, 2003

By 

A Reader (India) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Paperback)

Literature often transcends pre-set boundaries of category or genre. Prime examples include the chronicles of Alice and Gulliver originally conceived to satirise society and later metamorphosed into children's classics, and more recently the popularity of the Harry Potter novels among adult readers. 'Haroun and the sea of stories' could be placed in a similar category. It can be read as a fairy tale or as a satire that addresses everyday problems, narrates social conditions and broaches political issues.

Regarded by readers and critics alike as one of the master storytellers of the present day literary world, it is not surprising that Mr.Rushdie has conjured up a fantasy based on the world or rather the ocean of stories, named after the ancient Indian treatise Kathasaritsagar.

The protagonist Haroun Khalifa is a young boy who leads a happy middle class life distinct from the rich, poor, `super-rich' and `super-poor' people inhabiting a nameless sad city.

Haroun's father Rashid Khalifa is a famous story teller - the Shah of Blah with fabled oceans of notions, who often refers to the streams of story water he drinks to keep up the supply of wondrous tales that pour forth from within him. Haroun takes this as an eccentric statement by his father, and soon discovers that the ocean of stories indeed exists, and that only he could save it from total annihilation.

Haroun's world is suddenly taken apart when his mother elopes with their neighbour Mr.Sengupta, a mean clerk who had forever questioned the significance of Rashid's tales ('What's the use of stories that are not even true?') and Rashid loses his gift to spin wondrous yarns. When Rashid is summoned by a politician to campaign through his stories in the Valley of K, the two decide to risk taking the trip which turns out to be both hilarious and fascinating.

On board a peacock-shaped houseboat on the 'Dull Lake', Haroun discovers to his surprise and horror that his father is going to cancel his subscription to the streams of the Story Ocean. After a squabble with the water genie Iff who has come to disconnect the story tap, Haroun manages to get a ride on the machine-hoopoe Butt to Kahani, the second moon of the earth that contains the ocean of stories.

Kahani also contains two diametrically opposite worlds, the land of Gup characterised by perpetual light inhabited by the Guppies who love to talk, and the land of Chup that is permanently dark and cold and is home to the Chupwallas who worship Bezaban, the prince of silence. The Guppies and the Chupwallas are mortal enemies, and when Haroun lands on Kahani, there is a terrible crisis looming on Gup - The cult master of Chup, Khattam-Shud has kidnapped the Guppie princess Batcheat intending to sacrifice her to Bezaban and worse, has started polluting the story ocean to destroy it completely.

Accompanied by Iff, Butt, Mali the floating gardener and a pair of loopy fishes called Goopy and Bagha, Haroun sets forth to save the ocean. The rest of the story deals with how he succeeds in this endeavour and is rewarded with a 'synthesised' happy ending courtesy P2C2E (Processes Too Complicated To be Explained).

The text sparkles with witticisms concealing thoughts, and thoughts that evoke spontaneous laughter. There is a lot of wordplay as can be expected from a Rushdie novel. The dialogues are characteristic of Mr. Rushdie's works, with the characters speaking peculiar dialects of Indianised English - Oneeta Sengupta's consoling words to the Khalifas, the conversation of Butt/Buttoo, the rhyming banter of Goopy and Bagha, the foolish babble of Prince Bolo, the songs of Mali and the petty quarrels between the mud-men and mud-women in Buttoo's bus are sure to evoke laughter in even the most curmudgeonly reader.

A beautiful passage describing the dance of the shadow warrior Mudra who speaks through gestures (Abhinaya) conveys that duality exists even in Kahani, and that creatures of silence and darkness could be as charming as the children of light and speech. So is the abstraction describing how emotions influence the atmosphere, with miserable thoughts causing the atmosphere to stink and brighter ones clearing out the smog. The ridiculous antics of silly Prince Bolo to save Princess Batcheat seem justifiable when he is described as being just like love - dashing, gallant and a little foolish.

Above all these, the main theme of the book is brought forth implicitly - That story-tellers cannot be silenced, and the ocean of stories would continue to surge with its many threads mixing and intermingling perpetually to generate fresh stories that would keep flowing. Looking a little deeper, it conveys that the magic of fiction has the power to soothe, restore, edify and sustain the harried, quotidian protagonists of everyday life.

31 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars True Story-telling, at its best, February 9, 2000

By 

"kokapelli" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Paperback)

An instant classic. This is a story that is meant to be read over and over, out loud, silently, in public, or in the comfort of one's own bed.

The words flow and flow, lyrical and rhythmic, while spinning this beautiful fantasy. After reading the book, I find myself talking like the characters, chuckling to myself on the subway suddenly reminded of something in the book.

In fact, when I was reading this book on the way to work, I had people come up to me and ask "How is that?" (Which is unheard of, especially for New York Commuters!). All I can say is, "Just Delightful. Highly Recommend you read it."

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A deep story for children, December 18, 1999

By 

Russell Belfer (San Mateo, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Haroun and the Sea of Stories (Paperback)

This book works simply as a beautiful fantasy story about a boy who saves a world of make believe, and can also be taken as a deeper meditation on creativity, the dangers of authoritarianism, the value and the honest weaknesses of democracy, the important of history, and the occasional importance of maintaining an illusion. It is easy to read, great for children, and illuminating for adults. An excellent introduction to Salman Rushdie.