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Loading... Haroun and the Sea of Stories (original 1990; edition 1991)by Salman Rushdie
Work detailsHaroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie (1990)
1   EverettWiggins | Apr 9, 2013 |  read this book. (  ) zeteticat | Apr 2, 2013 | A great story that is, in many ways about stories. A truly remarkable read. ( ) Poindextrix | Apr 1, 2013 | I loved the first 2/3 of this book, but by the end it had lost a bit of it's luster. Nevertheless, it was a creative and enjoyable story. (  ) cait815 | Apr 1, 2013 | Got this book through hema-verf from the Stichting Overal te Nijmegen. BoekenTrol71 | Mar 31, 2013 |
". . . [a] remarkable new children's book . . . [T]he experiences that lie behind 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories' are nearly as fantastic as anything in the tale. . . . full of comic energy and lively verbal invention."
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0140157379, Paperback)Immediately forget any preconceptions you may have about Salman Rushdie and the controversy that has swirled around his million-dollar head. You should instead know that he is one of the best contemporary writers of fables and parables, from any culture. Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a delightful tale about a storyteller who loses his skill and a struggle against mysterious forces attempting to block the seas of inspiration from which all stories are derived. Here's a representative passage about the sources and power of inspiration:So Iff the water genie told Haroun about the Ocean of the Stream of Stories, and even though he was full of a sense of hopelessness and failure the magic of the Ocean began to have an effect on Haroun. He looked into the water and saw that it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry of breathtaking complexity; and Iff explained that these were the Streams of Story, that each coloured strand represented and contained a single tale. Different parts of the Ocean contained different sorts of stories, and as all the stories that had ever been told and many that were still in the process of being invented could be found here, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in fact the biggest library in the universe. And because the stories were held here in fluid form, they retained the ability to change, to become new versions of themselves, to join up with other stories and so become yet other stories; so that unlike a library of books, the Ocean of the Streams of Story was much more than a storeroom of yarns. It was not dead, but alive. (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:48:33 -0500) (summary from another edition) |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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Set in an imaginary Kashmir, in a fictional now, Rushdie’s masterwork (and I say this knowing full well what a truly magnificent book Midnight’s Children is—but it, like Moby Dick, is a wonderfully, humanly flawed work, of such scope and complexity that perfection is unthinkable) is appropriate for children, in spite of the adult themes which spark the plot. Haroun, himself a child, undertakes to save his father’s career (and marriage) by traveling with a water genie to Earth’s second moon. Here, he must intervene in a war and reverse an intentional environmental disaster to save the Sea of Stories, from which his father draws the stories he tells for a living.
Of course, it all works out in the end and Haroun learns the value of stories. Read it as an environmental metaphor, as an allegory for contemporary degradation of our humanity, or simply for fun—but read it.