Date: Sun, 18 Feb 1996 15:22:58 GMT From: CHRISTOPHER ROLLASON To: toryc@hk.super.net Cc: grewals@acf2.NYU.EDU Subject: Rushdie - digest of French press 12-18 Feb 96 Salman Rushdie in the French press, week 12-18 February 1996 (all translations mine) 1. Dernieres Nouvelles dAlsace (Strasbourg), 14 Feb Rushdie is featured (headline and photo) on front cover: Salman Rushdie appeals to Europe. On the evening of 13 Feb, SR met the mayoress of Strasbourg and representatives of the European Parliament and the Council of Europe at the city hall. He called on the European institutions to continue their support for him, and praised the courage of the ordinary citizens - booksellers, publishers, academics, readers - who have acted to reduce the impact of the fatwa. On 14 Feb - the 7th anniversary of the fatwa - the European Parliament passed a resolution calling on the Iranian authorities to withdraw it. 2. Liberation, 14 Feb Contains (p. 8) the full text of an article by Rushdie, Seven years of the fatwa, which appears to be his Strasbourg speech. He stresses that The Satanic Verses is on sale around the world in 20 languages; it has been defended by numerous Muslim intellectuals and is even taught in Damascus (no details given). 3. Liberation, 15 Feb Cover photo of Rushdie, interview and review of The Moors Last Sigh, in cahier - livres. Interview: SR explains his choice of Spain and Portugal to represent the East-West connection in the new novel: Spain before the inquisition was a metaphor of India today, a society based on the mixing and hybridization of cultures, which gave way to dogmatism and homogeneity after the expulsion of the Jews and Muslims; while the Portuguese were quite simply the first Europeans to reach India by sea. He underplays the fantastic or extraordinary element in his novels: Im not a fantastic author - its the Indian reality which is fantastic. He also stresses that the affirmative female characters in the novel - above all, Aurora Zogoiby, who is partly based on one of Indias existing, and important, women artists - are more representative of Indian womanhood than Westerners might think, attached as they are to the stereotype - false, in SRs view - of the submissive Indian woman. Of all his characters, Aurora is the one who has given me the most pleasure. He denies that the novel is a reflection of his own situation - of course there are allusions, but they are echoes - transposed and deformed; he feels the problem is that readers worldwide inevitably know about his personal situation and so are tempted to read his writings autobiographically. Review: the reviewer agrees that Moor is _not_ autobiography, as the story narrated is imaginary. The novel is seen as a huge fresco, historical but ... not naturalistic - a surrealistic, torrential, slightly didactic picture of the India of yesterday and today: a tribute to the pluralist, hybrid India which SR now feels is threatened by communalism and extremism - he knows that the golden age is over, and the nightmare is beginning. Against that nightmare, the response offered by the novel is - to write. 4. Le Monde, 14 Feb - review of Moor and comments by Umberto Eco and Mario Vargas Llosa, p. 26 Review, by Nicole Zand: the reviewer sees the Cochin of the first part as embodying, with its Christian, Jewish and Hindu communities, the old hybrid India - a world of tolerance ... a golden age, with its mixtures of cultures. Also stressed is Rushdies love for Bombay, his native city now threatened by the apocalypse; the reviewer points out how the novel anticipates the recent renaming of the city as Mumbai by the Shiv Sena party, Mumbais Axis in the novel. Moor is seen as the novel of an Oriental storyteller who, under the appearance of the crazy and the droll, puts us face to face with the gravest problems of todays world. Maria Vargas Llosa considers that with Moor SRs work has become more ambitious: he now has a much more subtle, much more balanced vision, not only of literature but also of history and politics. He contrasts SRs defence of pluralism with the tyrannies of intolerance and the belief in an absolute truth, and stresses that his struggle is universal, not an exotic exception: religious fundamentalism without frontiers is a new and dangerous force in the world which writers must oppose. Umberto Eco argues that the Rushdie affair is of deep concern for all those who believe in freedom: it annuls the very idea of exile, proving that international terror knows no frontiers. 5. Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 Feb, interview, pp. 72-74 Rushdie sees Moor as the continuation of the journey I began 15 years ago with _Midnights Children_, feeling that today my language is more fluid, more sensual, more exuberant. He has tried to create a _rapid_ language, in keeping with the Moors speeded-up existence, which is itself a metaphor for the unprecedentedly fast pace of historical change in todays world (History is going too fast). On Cochin, he says that he has only been there 3 or 4 times in his life, and therefore made an effort to research the background in great detail. The Jewish community, some 50 strong when he was there in 1982, has now dwindled to a mere dozen. He repeats the point made to Liberation about Indian women: the women I have known, in my own family or elsewhere, are noisy, demanding, excessive and sexually extremely free (he adds that Bombay is characterized by greater sexual freedom than the rest of India). He also repeats that Aurora is his homage to all the women artists of India, and praises their eclectic, non-abstract style as an instance of cultural mixing. SR refers to the de facto ban on the novel in India (STOP PRESS: this has now been lifted - see my other posting of today), against which he has complained at federal level: Its very important for me to be read in India. He stresses, once again, that he is not writing fantasy, about Bombay or anywhere else: All I narrate about Bombay has really happened. Im not talking about a dream-world, but a real world. Indias reality may seem extraordinary - corruption there has reached unimaginable dimensions - this is one of the themes of my novel, and yet Im still light-years away from the true reality - but Westerners should have no cause for complacency: when I speak of corruption and fantasy in India, European readers should not feel theyre getting of scot-free. That story is, alas, a planetary story. On the fatwa, he declares that the true combat of literature is against censorship, and that to want to burn a book, you need not to have read it. He also denies that the entire Muslim community is against him: When I lecture in England I met large numbers of Muslim readers - and, above all, women readers who tell me they support me. The act of writing Moor was a moment of jubilation: I rediscovered the colours, the noises, the odours of India. The Nouvel Observateur does not review the novel as such, but describes the French translation as remarkable. ****** Le dernier soupir du Maure is now in the French bookshops: translation by Danielle Marais, Editions Plon, 420 pp., 149 French francs. Christopher Rollason