Customer Reviews

Haroun and the Sea of Stories

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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.

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."

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.

I've heard about Salman Rushdie. Both good and bad. The only way to find out the truth for myself was to read one of his books. Being the naturally lazy man that I am, I grabbed the smallest book of his I could find. Little did I know that this book was a fairy tale, and not something that would rouse Islamic fundamentalists.

Anyway, I already purchased it and decided to read it anyway. At first, I saw that Rushdie had a great imagination and could weave a great story.

This book is about Hauron, a boy living in a glum city where his dad is a prime storyteller. He travels to a far away city, only discover that a Water Genie has stopped his dad's faucet to the sea of stories. In order to help his father, he travels to the Sea of Stories and engages in a war to save the sea, and his father, while meeting interesting characters and seeing interesting sights.

The book starts off well, with Rushdie's almost poetic use of language. The book, however, slowly digresses. Not that Rushdie's work disintegrates, but as the fairy tale progresses, with even more characters, and even more anomalies, it gets pretty dull after a while. The ability to shock or dazzle the reader is weened away until it becomes a chore to finish the book.

I would say that this book is good for a change of pace, and at only 200 pages, won't take too long to read, but I could only marginally recommend it.

This may be the most delightfully whimsical yet brilliant little book I've ever read. A joy at every level - story, characters, themes, language - it literally made me smile every time I read it. A testament to the value of concision and expertly-crafted simplicity, after reading The Satanic Verses, Fury, and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, this proved to me that Rushdie's seeming mastry of language and storytelling was far from some style he coincidentally stumbled across which worked for both him and his audience, but was a result of unique craft which he can scale deftly across any genre or style.

In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salmon Rushdie leads the reader through a magical journey filled with creative characters, parallels, symbolism, and most of all he teaches us the importance of words and verbal expression. When Haroun's mom leaves him, and Haroun's father Rashid, a renowned storyteller known as the "Ocean of Notions" loses his ability to tell stories, Haroun finds himself on a heroic journey to save his father's storytelling ability and learn the importance of stories. Haroun's journey takes place on Kahani, earth's second moon where the source of all stories, the sea of stories is located. Like currents, the stories in this ocean are bountiful and beautiful. The sea itself is being destroyed by Khattam Shud, "the foe of speech," and Haroun must choose whether to save his father, the storyteller, or the source of all stories. Filled with plentimaw fishes, mechanical birds, floating gardeners, shadow warriors and much more, Rushdie continues to surprise the reader with delightful and creative characters. These characters ultimately help Haroun on his journey to defeat the evil Khattam Shud, and save the ocean and it's stories from being destroyed. The following is an excerpt from the book which describes Mudra, a warrior who fights with his own shadow:

"What terrifying eyes they were! Instead of whites, they had blacks; and the irises were grey as twilight, and the pupils were white as milk." (Rushdie 125)

With descriptions like these, Salmon Rushdie paints a picture of the characters in the mind of the reader. Not only are the characters in this story are original, creative, and intriguing, but they are well described.

What's the use of stories that aren't even true? This question is asked repeatedly throughout the book. Haroun questions storytelling when his mother leaves him and his father is no longer able to tell stories. Salmon Rushdie could have been questioning storytelling himself when he wrote this book in hiding after he was censored for his work on the Satanic Verses. Haroun and the Sea of Stories explores literature and its importance. It provides an answer for this question, and the reader learns that words can bring people together and inspire many. Essentially, Salmon Rushdie has created a classic heroic tale where characters help the protagonist achieve a goal. However, in this heroic story, the protagonist learns about stories like his own, and their importance. In a way, Haroun faces the evils of censorship (Khattam Shud). This is not only a heroic story. It is a heroic story about heroic stories. With descriptive characters, unique settings, and flowing words, this book is intriguing, humorous, and fun to read. It is fast paced, and hard to put down. People of all ages will enjoy this book. In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salmon Rushdie lets us into a world of creativity, where the importance of story telling is questioned and answered.

This book is an enchanting and profound fairy story in its own right; but it acquires an especial dimension of poignancy when we remember the context in which it was written. Salman Rushdie was in hiding after the Ayatollah Khomeini had issued the fatwa condemning Rushdie to death for having, in The Satanic Verses, played about with the story of the life of Mohammed; and he had called on faithful Muslims to carry out that sentence. In hiding, Salman was separated from his then eleven year old son Zafar and from his wife, the novelist Marianne Wiggins, who found the crisis in which her husband was involved as the result of his story telling such a strain on their relationship that, some time after The Satanic Verses was published, she announced that they were separating. Perhaps Rushdie, like Rashid (Haroun's father), had been so busy telling stories that he never noticed what it was doing to his family life.

Rushdie had defended himself against the fatwa, in part, with an impassioned plea for freedom of thought and speech and for not only the right to, but the value of, the imaginative faculties in literature.

This fairy story, written for Zafar, makes the same case. In it, the fear is expressed (but triumphantly met in this story) that the isolation of Rashid, "the Shah of Blah", would stifle his voice to a croak and disconnect him from the Ocean of Stories; the love is proclaimed which Salman has for the rich and colourful possibilities of story telling; the battle between him and the fundamentalists is shown in terms of the battle between Light and Darkness; the fantasy is that his son Zafar, alias Haroun, may rescue him and reunite him also with his wife Marianne, alias Soraya. It was surely Zafar's wishful fantasy also. Naturally in a story written for his son, it is Haroun and not Rashid who is the central character of the story. The story will delight Zafar; but it is probably only in later years that he would be able to take in the full meaning of the book.

The Ocean of Stories was on the planet Kahani (Indian for "story"), where a battle was fought out between two realms. A piece of machinery had prevented the planet from rotating, so that the sun never shone on the realm of physical and spiritual darkness. It was called Chup (Indian for "quiet"), and was governed by Khattam-Shud (Indian for "done for"), whose long-term objective was to poison the Ocean of Stories, which he has already managed to pollute, but he had not yet managed to plug the Well Spring itself. The realm of light, where the sun shone all the time, was called Gup (meaning "gossip" or "nonsense"). Its people argued about everything, and its army of Pages was rather chaotic until, in order to defend their freedom, they let themselves be organized into Chapters and Volumes: Rushdie believes that a good fight is best fought in print, and the Commander in Chief of the Guppee army is called Kitab (Indian for "book").

What wins the victory of Gup over Chup is a magic trick by which Haroun can wish for the sun to blaze on the dark side of Kahani, so that all the shadowy forces melt away. The trick has wrecked the machinery which has kept the people of Gup in perpetual light; when they repaired it, they came to a much more sensible arrangement and made the planet rotate in such a way that both sides of it had their share of light and darkness, of chatter and of quiet. Haroun had already found that darkness has its own beauty and interest: "'If Guppees and Chupwallas didn't hate each other so,' he thought, 'they might actually find each other pretty interesting. Opposites attract, as they say.'" The symbol of Yin and Yang springs to mind.

The story is full of reflections about freedom (with all its imperfections) and about the nature and importance of fantasy, myth and story-telling, about ecology and multi-culturalism, even about shadows in the Jungian sense. There is a special delight for those readers who recognize or are told the meaning of Indian words which are given as names to most of the characters, and who know about the role of gestures (mudra) made by often green-painted performers in Indian Kathakali dancing.

Poor Haroun. His mother has run off with the dull neighbor, leaving his father, the Shah of Blah, without any stories to tell, so dispirited is he over his wife's departure. Haroun, who has recently questioned the value of his father's work, as is the wont of most 12 year olds to do, finds himself off on an adventure to recapture the stories his father must have.

Part fantasy, part allegory and always clever and engaging, the story told of Haroun's adventures speaks to the power of story in our lives and in the world. The constant word play and twists of language are funny, though at times I felt they became just "too much." While we are being entertained by maniac bus drivers, strange genies and odd fish, Haroun and his father both are coming to terms with the things in the world that truly matter. This is one of those rare books, written for adult readers, that children will enjoy read aloud, cuddled up next to you on the couch, swept away by the fantasy.

Back in the days when Salman Rushdie was a literary fugitive, he fulfilled a long standing vow to his son. Zafar, then about nine years old, had begged his father to write a children's story. Rushdie had put this off until the hubub over his fourth novel exploded. Then, throughout the Muslim world, soot from charred copies of "The Satanic Verses" wafted skyward and the faithful wailed for the infidel author's demise. In response the essay "In Good Faith" appeared. An exhausted Rushdie, somewhere, who knows where, it probably felt like nowhere, was left with just enough energy to take on a short project. "Haroun and the Sea of Stories" was conceived in this strange fugitive exile from everyday life. The results display a fervent imagination in no way limited by the threats surrounding it. Though "Haroun" targets twelve to fifteen year olds, readers will recognize Rushdie's indubitable style weaving throughout the fantastical tale. If Roald Dahl had been from India, he probably would have written something like this. "Haroun" works at the level of myth and fable with a lurking moral. Every now and then it peeks out and winks at the reader. That it relates to freedom of speech and the importance of storytelling should come as no surprise. Veiled references to certain religious persuasions will also not go unnoticed. Though "Haroun" does not relate, storywise, to Rushdie's predicament at the time, he nonetheless uses the medium to express some opinions about his censorious detractors.

The fable tells of young Haroun's journey to the moon Kahani to restore the storytelling powers of his famous father, Rashid. One day Soraya, Rashid's wife and Haroun's mother, stops singing and abandons her family, leaving Rashid in a muted state (though he bleats and mutters "Ark, ark, ark.") Rashid's fallen reputation has fatal implications since a political thug has hired him to entertain and sway the masses before elections. No stories, no life. Ouch. While sleeping on this same thug's houseboat on Dull Lake, before the next day's ominous speech, Haroun notices a small man in the bathroom. From this point on things get very interesting. His name is Iff and he has come to disconnect Rashid's story water supply. Haroun confiscates Iff's valuable Disconnector and forces Iff to take him to the Walrus to bargain for his father's story water supply. Riding a fantastic mechanical telepathic bird named Butt the Hoopoe, the ride to the moon Kahani at just the right speed. There Haroun learns of the lands of Gup and Chup. Gup oversees the Ocean of Stories, the source of all narrative threads, and "The Process Too Complicated To Explain" or "P2C2E." Chup lives in internal darkness under the cruel rule of Khattam-Shud. Here silence and censorship reign. Khattam-shud schemes to poison the Ocean of Stories and plug up the ocean's source with a stadium-sized plug. Suddenly, Rashid appears on Kahani. The Chups suspect him of spying, but he warns them that their princess Batcheat has been apprehended by Gups. They threaten to sew her lips together to keep her from singing (her looks and singing apparently leave much to be desired). Joined by Plentimaw fish, who have multiple mouths, water walking gardeners, and a rebellious Shadow Warrior named Mudra, the Chups go to war against the Gups. All seems lost until Haroun remembers his Wishwater. With it he literally raises the sun.

"Haroun and the Sea of Stories" revels in fabulism, absurdity, pop culture references (most notably the Beatles), and, most of all, fun. But it represents more than just a wild ride. It serves as a poignant literary metaphor for Rushdie's oft-repeated defense of fiction and the novel. He had more in mind than a children's story, and it shows. Scenes of moving melancholy flow into scenes of unhinged joy. The ending, though many adults will see it coming, is magnificent. So if anyone ever asks, as Old Man Sengupta defiantly asks Soraya, "What's the use of stories that aren't even true?" Tell them it's all here, right here in "Haroun". Look no further.

This book is sort of the Arabian Nights + Princess Bride, with a little Alice in Wonderland thrown into the mix. When Rashid, a storyteller known as the Shah of Blah, loses the ability to tell stories, his son Haroun sets out to find out what has happened. With the help of Iff the Water Genie and a cast of colorful characters he finds out that forces of Darkness are polluting the Sea of Stories.

It's all a thinly veiled allegory for Islam trying to silence the author after his Satanic Verses was published, but it's deftly handled & often quite amusing. Rushdie does an especially nice job with word plays & puns & the book requires rereading & reading aloud to catch them all, which makes it a perfect book for adults to read to older kids.

GRADE: B