By the Book: Book Club May 2023 - Victory City

Written before the attempt on Salman Rushdie's life earlier this year, but released after, Victory City is an oddly prescient book that's also one of the most interesting of Rushdie's long career. Framed as a fictional translation of the epic history of the Bisnagan empire, it is also ostensibly the biography of the empire's queen, Pampa Kampana, who - casually - has the powers of Parvati, the goddess. Its themes also focus on the power and responsibility of creation, the dangers of blind belief, and how acts of violence can shape freedom of speech and thought. In this month's Book Club, we get into this very rich, layered text from one of our favourite authors.