The Moor's Last Sigh has left me hungry for more Rushdie. Read this book with a clear head. I guarantee you will enjoy it.
Oh, I must say it does help to be very familiar with India before plunging yourself into this book.Rushdie's got plenty of sighs "The moor's last sigh" is the story of Moraes Zogoybi, an Indian-born half jew half christian, who carries in his body the curse of living twice as fast as anyone else. Through the book, he tells us the story of his family in India.
The only other book I'd read by Rushdie was "Haroun and the sea of stories", which is really wonderful, although directed to younger readers. The only other Indian author i've read is Arundathi Roy ("The god of small things), this one an "older-people" author, and I didn't enjoy her book. So, this one was a try in Rushdie's grown-up books, out of curiosity.
He is really very good in character development, not only about the main character, but everyone that surrounds him and has a more-than-slight participation in the story. What other authors do with plots, Rushdie do with people: they seem very different and un-related at the beggining, and are all tied up at the end.
The story itself has plenty of extraordinary elements, and is sometimes detached of reality, particularly in the end.
I'ver read many reviews saying that, since this is Rushdie's first book since "Satanic Verses", they expexted a dark and hateful book, but found "The moor's last sigh" to be very light and happy and optimistic. Well, in my view, the story in "The moor's last sigh" is VERY sad and dark. It's possible to trace similarities between Rushdie's and Moraes' lives. Both of them have a curse and a deformity they don't understand and didn't ask to be brought upon them, and their lives will (or may) be shortened because of something external to their ways.
I don't give this book five stars because of the differences in the pace of the narrative (sometimes it was too slow, mostly in the middle, and sometimes it was too fast, like in the rushed ending) and because of the great number of unreal or fantastic elements in the story, which are not to my taste.
Grade 8.3/10
