I knew very little about Nicaragua before I opened this book and now I know a little more. It is a portrait of the country at a particular time, after the sandinista revolution but before its outcome was known. In 1986, the USA under President Reagan defied the International Criminal Court and continued to fund Contra counter-insurgents in Nicaragua. Rushdie was a guest of the Sandinista government and he was charmed by a country led by poets whose revolution seemed anything but a dictatorship in the making. There were problems to be resolved but at that time war with the USA seemed a real possibility for the Nicaraguan people. A fascinating snapshot of a country in the making. ( )

A personal journey into a politically explosive land. Rushdie gives us his take on things happening in Nicaragua - an extremely complicated situation. Introducing us to real people embroiled in this situation, helps us avoid the oversimplification many times attibuted to investigative journalism. ( )

A magnificent short piece of travel writing and political reportage, with the celebrated writer visiting Nicaragua on little more than a whim to see what the reality of the situation was. Brilliant stuff. ( )

I loved the breadth and brilliance of Rushdie's Midnight's Children, admired his clever, biting and sly portrait of Benazir Bhutto (the 'Virgin Ironpants') in Shame, was confused with the immature ramblings of Grimus, bored with the Satanic Verses, but to some extent sympathised with the author's viewpoint in The Jaguar Smile.

One of many anti-American, or at least pro-socialist, books that seeks to cast doubt on US involvement on foreign soil in the name of political freedom and the expansion of market, this one is also somewhat of a travelogue and occasionally entertaining. As in almost all Rushdie books, the reader is assumed to be well-read and to be able to catch all the literary allusions which so amuse the author himself, just as they did his hero James Joyce.

If you are a Rushdie afficianado then you will love this book, otherwise you might find its greatest virtue is its brevity. ( )