Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #349483 in Books
• Published on: 1993-03-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.com
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.

"And if you are very, very careful, or very, very highly skilled, you can dip a cup into the Ocean," Iff told Haroun, "like so," and here he produced a little golden cup from another of his waistcoat pockets, "and you can fill it with water from a single, pure Stream of Story, like so," as he did precisely that.

From Publishers Weekly
In a contemporary fable filled with riotous verbal pranks, Haroun, who unintentionally stopped time when he froze his father's esteemed storytelling ability, seeks to undo his error on a quest through a magical realm. "As eloquent a defense of art as any Renaissance treatise . . . saturated with the hyperreal color of such classic fantasies as The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland ," said PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Rashid Khalifa, a renowned storyteller, has lost his touch. Once an "Ocean of Notions," he is now "The Shah of Blahs." Haroun, Rashid's son, embarks on an epic quest to restore his father's creativity. One of the problems is environmental: the pollutants of modern civilization have clouded the once-clear streams of story. Another is conspiratorial: the Union of Tight Lips, minions of the evil Khattam-Shud, confound communication by switching on rows of "darkbulbs." Rushdie's first book since the controversial Satanic Verses ( LJ 12/88) is more a postmodern fairy tale in the style of Angela Carter or John Barth than a traditional novel. The story is allegorical rather than realistic, the characters emblematic and two-dimensional. Poignant parallels between Rashid's predicament and Rushdie's own situation are what hold the reader's interest. An amusing but lightweight entertainment. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/90.
- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch . , Los Angeles
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Just a lot of fun
I've read people say this book was or wasn't good for children... my children enjoyed it, and I thought it was a lot of fun, too. And I'm not a big Rushdie fan.

timelessly delightful...
is it silly for an adult to thoroughly enjoy this book??

'cause i did.

and i've a feeling that a decade from now, i'd still find this surprisingly wonderful.

though the author did not belabor the fantastical world Haroun found himself embroiled in with thick imagery and endless descriptions that in some books become tiresome, there nevertheless was a peculiarly believable aspect in the realm of the Sea of Stories. what i also immensely loved about rushdie's narration was that, in the case of our young hero, there were no long-winded ruminations of the self, no drawn-out complications on what is exactly good and evil, and perhaps best of all, no lingering soppy accounts of events after their happy ending. everything was told, in relation to the story, in a fast-paced and very matter-of-factly way. we have to remember that Haroun was a just a very young man, and though he sometimes falls into bouts of doubt and even cynicism, he essentially acted in a manner befitting his age--sometimes impulsively and even with the tenacity of a child bent on seeing things put to rights in a world gone awry, yet also with remarkable restraint and poise in the midst of a foreign land, without putting on airs of heroism.

all the other characters in the story were also amusing to read about, even the bad guys. even if there was a hint of menace, you'd still feel that it's a lighthearted story--only when you're halfway reading it do you realize there's more to it than meets the eye, as Rashid would say about his son.

the story captures the reality of the unfortunate tendency of adults to lose their wonderful innocence. fairytales forgotten. sometimes even corrupted and sewn in with new meanings that blur their purity as we grow older and more preoccupied with our detached way of living. we've become increasingly cynical, to the point that we can be contemptuous of what we have so blisfully embraced as children. sad really, but there it is. which is another great thing about this book--it doesn't scold nor spout morals. it just lays there for you to enjoy yet somehow makes you think. even for just a moment.

Rushdie's Ocean of Notions keeps flowing!
What happens when Salman Rushdie gets notions from a literary ocean that contains currents like The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, The Wizard of Oz by Baum, Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, and The Princess Bride by William Goldman? He turns into a story-teller recounting the tale of Haroun and his father Rashid, the Shah of Blah. When Rashid's story-telling dries up, his son Haroun travels on a fantastic journey to face the forces of Darkness that pollute the Sea of Stories and threaten to silence stories forever.

It's a charming and fantastic adventure featuring a wide array of extended metaphors, personification, puns, and other delightful word-play - for me, these were the highlights, along with a captivating story. But although it seems to be a children's story, in reality this is no more a book for children than the death sentence placed on Salman Rushdie was a matter of child's play. After publishing the Satanic Verses in 1989, Rushdie was forced to go into hiding when the spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Khomeini) placed a death sentence over his head for blasphemy. Rashid's story is really Rushdie's own, and in this respect this work of fiction moves beyond the juvenile, and functions as an important allegorical parable about Islam's attempt to silence and repress Rushdie's freedom of speech.

To what extent it succeeds on this level is something I'll leave more qualified literary experts to judge. But one can't deny that the story sparkles with wonderful wordplay and imagery, such as the ongoing contrasts between light and darkness, substance and shadow, speech and silence, purity and poison. Yet one has to wonder to what extent the fantastic window-dressing is an appropriate garb for a serious satire. In this respect Rushdie does not seem to achieve the same success as C.S. Lewis' Narnia Chronicles, because it seems hard to imagine that children and youth are entirely satisfied with this narrative on the level of story alone, sensing that there's a depth here that escapes their comprehension somehow (as reviews by younger readers seem to confirm). On the other hand, those looking to immerse themselves in the deeper waters of allegory and political satire might at times find that the story that brings this message at times becomes just a little too cute and the buffoonery just a little too much for the seriousness of the message it embraces. But perhaps this tension is more imagined than real. Older readers who can appreciate some of Rushdie's own circumstances that form the backdrop of this story and who can appreciate a good story with clever word play, are sure to find that there's a reward to be had by swimming in the Oceans of Notions flowing here. - GODLY GADFLY (March, 2008)