In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who begins to speak out of the girl’s mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga, Victory City, the wonder of the world.

Over the next 250 years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from growing the city from a bag of magic seeds to the tragic downfall of the empire. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry—with Pampa Kampana at its center.

Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, Victory City is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is in itself a testament to the power of storytelling.

This sweeping epic of a novel is the type of book that Rushdie does brilliantly. Even at his advanced age he is on form here, a magical tale full of life, love, intrigue and betrayal. A very entertaining read.

https://quizlit.org/book-of-the-month-august-2023 ( )

I feel so divided on this one. Rushdie is usually a master storyteller with a great sense of humor. However, this book was difficult to get into and oftentimes... boring? I felt it really dragged on and turned into a retelling of events without a central idea. Pampa Kampana was a confusing character. The book was desperately trying to be feminist, but I found the message confusing with a lot of contradictions. ( )

https://sravikabodapati.wordpress.com/2024/02/15/book-review-victory-city-by-sal... ( )

This is a 250-year history of the city of Bisnaga and its empire, and the woman who magically created the city and who lived as long as the city, Pampa Kampana. Throughout the city's history, the culture vacillates between liberalism, where women have power, art flourishes, and all religious views are tolerated; and religious conservatism, where women are oppressed, art is suppressed, and religious morals are strictly enforced. This is a thinly-veiled critique the current world struggle over "illiberal democracy" and other forms of intolerance and fascism.

As always, Rushdie's writing is brilliant and engaging and playful. ( )

"Words are the only victors." What an absolutely amazing storyteller Rushdie is! He teaches by example and he teaches by telling stories in the most magnificent way. I'm not usually into historical fiction, and I'm not even sure this is one. It is a wonderful, colourful, mesmerising tale delivered by one of the world's best storytellers.

It starts with a punch to the stomach, and I was wondering if he wanted to make us vegetarians. However, somehow all the horrible events, all the betrayals flow so smoothly with the story and the parts that teach love, acceptance, kindness, hope, without being didactic for even a second, that it is not a heavy reading, it is light and magical.

It was fun to recognise allusions to well-known stories (and probably missing some others), I loved his dry wit, references to the problems of writing, the beautiful and melancholic, but never heavy atmosphere of the book. I really don’t know how this is possible.

“Yes, she reminded herself, terrible things happened, a terrible thing had happened to her, but life on earth was still bountiful, still plenteous, still good. She might be blind, but she could see that there was light.”

Also, I hadn't realised the empire, the city, and around half the characters were real, with accurate dates and names, until the very end of the book, where I found works about the history of an empire of the same name as the one in the book. I started to read the Wikipedia pages, but that account wasn’t engaging enough after this perfect tale. ( )