Salman Rushdie’s new novel is an ode to storytelling and freedom

Victory City  By Salman Rushdie; Random House; 352 pages; US$30. Jonathan Cape; £22

IN SALMAN Rushdie’s 15th novel, a magical storyteller survives a sadistic assault. In its aftermath she reflects that, although “terrible things happened”, nonetheless “life on earth was still bountiful, still plenteous, still good”.

Salman had completed “Victory City” before he was stabbed by a jihadist on a stage in New York, losing an eye and full use of a hand. His book’s joy in fictions that “could be as powerful as histories” testifies to a lifetime of free-spirited invention. But its defiance and exuberance is poignant now that the author of “Midnight’s Children” and “The Satanic Verses” has narrowly avoided the fate decreed for him by an Iranian fatwa of 1989.