– “Joseph Anton: A Memoir” by Salman Rushdie
I think when Rushdie wrote this in his autobiography, he was trying to explain what storytelling is all about. There are many factors and many ideologies about fiction and what exactly storytelling is. There’s a factor that says that storytelling is all fictitious and fabrications. But there’s a lobby per se that fiction isn’t all made up, and I also believe in that as there’s an element of truth in fiction.[break]
When Rushdie says that man is a storytelling animal, he’s stressing the importance of storytelling and trying to explain how stories can be created, fabricated and narrated. Stories are analytical, retrospective, and explanatory and they start from one generation to another and are taken to another level and goes on for generations. They continue for humankind to understand itself. For instance, there have been some stories which are very old which we pick up today like epics, such as Ramayana, Mahabharata, which we read and try to understand from many dimensions. We look at such stories from various perspectives in our process to understand.
Many writers usually and somehow put controversial aspects in their writing so that it shines out and is noticed easily. Rushdie, being a philosopher and a student of history and philosophy, his writings somehow touch philosophical as well as historical aspects but there’s a controversial element in his writing which I think is done on purpose to give it a more marketing value.
The abovementioned book is Rushdie’s memoir, and although it begins when a fatwa was first announced against Rushdie, he goes back from that day on to the end of the book and explains how and what went though his life as a writer, husband, as a lover, as a father, and about his writing career throughout that period and his life in general living under the fatwa.
I admire Rushdie’s writing as he’s such an intelligent writer and he shares his passion on history and philosophy, with his writing as analytical as mine. Being the writer he is, I admire him for his wit, boldness, audacity, for being honest, and apart from the genius mind that he has, he has the power to write beautiful prose that shows in his stories, mingling them with philosophy and history altogether.
Photo; Bhaswor Ojha
About Shah
A writer who believes that art is a form of expressing the truth in an abstract way, Shah has three novels, among other writings, published so far: “Loyals of the Crown,” “Beyond the Illusions,” and “Facing My Phantoms.”
She started writing from her schooldays and she started off with short stories.
She’s is basically inspired by good literature and derives her inspiration from people and emotions that come out of people.
“I like reading about people, and there are some writers who create plots and put in characters. But for me as a writer, characters, people and their emotions are important and I give a lot of stress on that. Details like a sad face to a little child carelessly laughing can inspire me. So basically, various emotions from many aspects of life are what keep me going,” says Shah.
She’s of the opinion that there are many forms of art like literature (fiction, drama), cinema, paintings and photography but art is an expression of truth in a veiled way as writers tend to express in a little fictitious, fabricated and abstract manner.
Shah is almost done working on the rewriting of her latest novel titled “The Other Queen” which is due to be published soon.
She also has a great passion for history and philosophy. “I tend to pick up subjects that have periods or historical aspects to them and also stories that are logical, retrospective and philosophical,” says Shah.
Shah’s five picks
Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph
This is a very infectious book and is so philosophical that it makes you really want to think about it. The book talks about delusions, and while reading this book, you start becoming delusioned yourself as you start asking a lot of questions. Joseph’s characters stand out as real and they have in them a unique fictitious nature, like an aura that engulfs a real person and makes him glow and shine out. There’s a real person but is larger than life, which is why the characters are both real and fabricated at the same time.
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Mantel is the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize for two consecutive years. This is a period fiction which has a very strong female character, Queen Anne Boleyn who isn’t exactly a protagonist as such but a very interesting character. A protagonist doesn’t mean that she has to be a good person or she has all the elements that make an evil person, either, but she’s been portrayed in a beautiful and interesting way that it makes you flip the pages. It has beautiful prose and has an innovative style as well.
Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
This is a sequel to Wolf Hall which is another of my favorite books by Mantel. The book delves into the core of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn. It shows how Henry is disillusioned with Boleyn though he fought for seven years to marry her. The story is gripping, and the way Mantel cuts short her sentences and jumps to another and in between the way she comes up with a beautiful line and goes back again leaves you wondering.
Em and The Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto
This is again a very philosophical book and the cover itself is of a woman which shows that it has a very strong female character in the book. The story is about a woman battling with mental disease and shows how her family is affected by that. But despite her sufferings and her constant battle, she rises above all and comes out as a very strong character, someone that you want to look up to and admire.
My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead by Jeffrey Eugenides
This is a collection of short stories by Eugenides who is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Middlesex.” It’s a collection of beautiful love stories written in different periods in different years. I read fiction a lot, and besides biographies and autobiographies, I also like reading short stories. The writer has presented the idea of love in a very interesting way; so I really admire this collection.
As told to Nistha Rayamajhi
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