The Moor's Last Sigh

The prologue to this brilliant book opens "in this dark wood . . . in what ought to be the middle pathway of my life." The reference to Dante is but one of a number of literary allusions crammed into almost every densely-textured page, but it turns out to provide a key to the curious structure of this ambitious work, which is basically a violent family saga with the even more violent birth-pangs of modern India as its background. Rather than starting in the Inferno, the book quickly rises to a sort of Paradise, and holds the reader there, enthralled, for the first two-thirds its length. Rushdie's fictional Gama-Zogoiby family mingles ancient bloodlines--Portugese, Moorish, Jewish, Hindu--and they come together in a sort of nuclear fusion. He writes in language at once false and true, brighter than Technicolor, spiced with pepper and coriander, erotic, witty, wildly inventive, and rich with more references than this reader can count. In its last third, however, the book somewhat loses its élan. First, it plunges its eponymous hero into the Bombay underworld as a kind of living Hell. Then, in the deceptively simple writing of its final section, it uproots him from India and wafts him to a surreal vision of an Andalusian village overrun by expatriates, to end in a stateless Purgatory. It is an unusual journey for this modern Dante, but (as others have commented) it may reflect the author's own life since his exile. One feels his grief for India, his lost Eden. Rushdie's title, besides being a multilingual pun (dernier soupir / last supper), is the name of a painting by the hero's mother, a famous artist. If the book has any one overarching theme, I would say it is about art itself: its passion, its power to simultaneously define and distort experience, and (sadly) its ultimate impermanence. [As a footnote, it is curious that THE MOOR'S LAST SIGH joins two other novels I have read recently in having a protagonist whose life-clock runs in an unorthodox manner. The hero of Andrew Sean Greer's THE CONFESSIONS OF MAX TIVOLI lives his life backwards. The hero of Audrey Niffenegger's THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE skips around freely in time. And Rushdie's Moor, Moraes Zogoiby, ages two years for every one. Although this is the finest of the three books, I am not sure what purpose is served by the distortion of time, except that it parallels the headlong rush of Rushdie's writing, and perhaps his own tragic sense of leaving life behind faster than he can catch it up.]

I have read other reviews of this same novel that take the slant of comparing situations in the novel to occurances in Rushdie's life, actual historical events in India...his work is called allegorical, symbolic...etc. And while I cannot dispute this, as I know precious little of India's history, and less about Rushdie himself, save for the SATANIC VERSES controversy...I offer a review as one who was purely entertained by my first indulgence of this wonderful writer.Moraes Zagoiby traces his family roots back to the rise of the da Gama family in the spice trade. From the great aunt abandoned on her wedding night by a husband fleeing in her gown to meet his male lover for a moonlight sail...to the bitter rivalry of two feuding clans employed in the family business that end up in tragedy; to the great uncle who disappears with the ocean current one dark night; to young Aurora da Gama, who marries a foreman in the family business and eventually delivers Moor into the world, born with a club right hand, and a body that ages at twice the normal rate. No matter how colorful his lineage, Moor's own story is as lively and entertaining as that of his family as he alternately blesses and curses his 'afflictions'; loses his heart on more than one occasion, and eventually strives to make a name for himself when the family banishes him. Rushdie's wry, double-entendre brand of humor brought too many smiles to my face to count, or give the details of. His descriptive powers are almost lyrical at times, his wit both scathing and coy, and his emotions real enough to penetrate the hearts of all. The Moor endears, enrages, and enlightens all in the fictional world he inhabits, and all those drawn into it by reading Rushdie's prose.Thankfully there are many other Rushdie novels to indulge in, and I am happy to have discovered a 'new' writer to add to my bookshelves.

After the Midnight Children, I was a little reluctant to buy another Rushie book, fearing I will be disappointed. However, The Moor's Last Sigh is as magical as the first one I read. Rushdie once again takes the point of view of an extraordinary individual, from an extraordinary family to look at the world, India and the small circle of the narrator's family and freinds. This unusual perspective, however, instead of alianating the reader, brings him/her closer and provdes us with a clearer understanding of the grand, as well as the ordinary.A powerful mixture of tragedy and comedy.

I picked up Rushdie's the Moor's Last Sigh, before I headed to India this last winter. I thought it would be a perfect introduction to Kerala...and the city of Cochin. When I was reading the tale, I already felt immersed in the tropical, sultry atmosphere of Cochin. Rushdie's writing style is brilliant; he has a style entirely unto himself. The novel is absolutely sweeping in breadth, he just lifts you into another world. I did not want to put the book down, but I had to once in a while to absorb the intense imagery and mind-blowing language. He has Cochin down to the T. While I was walking around that small fishing town, I suddenly recognzied all the familiar locales he wrote of...from the chinese fish nets, St. Francis Church, the Synagogue..the lake front... It's a fantastic & captivating escape from the grind of our daily routines. Rushdie is a an artiste with words.

In a careful and calculated manner, The Moor's Last Sigh leaps across four generations of a rich and demented Indian family, weaving an exquisitely-crafted tapestry of murder and suicide, atheism and asceticism, affection and adultery.The first person narrator of this cynical yet mischievous book is Moraes Zogoiby, aka "Moor," who, seemingly unaffected by his asthma, spins his tale sitting atop a tombstone within sight of the Alhambra in Spain and pursued by a policeman named--like the holy city of Islam--Medina.The centerpiece of this captivating and gorgeous novel is Moor's highly dysfunctional family, a Grand Guignol of good and evil, the deformations of the spirit wrought by love withered or love withheld and the beauty and violence of art, all representative of the tortured history of twentieth century India.Moor, himself, is the champion of miscegenation and cultural melange, bastards and cross-breeds. Standing six and one-half feet tall, Moor has a withered right hand and, like India, he grows too fast, twice the rate of a normal human being. A thirty-six year old elderly man, still in love with a deceitful (and deceased) woman, Moor exhibits the body of a none-too-healthy seventy-two year old. His bloodline, too, is as crowded and diverse as India, herself.Moor is the son of Abraham Zogoiby, a South Indian Jew who is probably the illegitimate descendant of Boabdil, the last Muslim Sultan of Granada and the celebrated artist, Aurora da Gama, a Christian claiming descent from the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama. Abraham and Aurora's love first carries them to the dizzying, hyperbolic heights of fame and power, then plunges them into depths reminiscent of Lucifer's expulsion from Paradise. The blood of the Zogoiby family is indeed tainted--with murder, adultery and lies--and they, in turn, infect everyone they encounter.A tragic figure, Moor nevertheless reveals a wickedly comic streak, as Rushdie combines high art with gaudy jags that refer to the pop cultures of India, America and Britain. Although most Rushdie readers are well-versed in multi-cultural sociology, even the most erudite may have to struggle with this book's obscure, inside jokes and satire.Disorientation also can occur as Rushdie leaps across time zones, from present to recent past to near future to ancient history. These time shifts, however, play an integral role in explaining each of Moor's vignettes and relating their importance to the story as a whole.Among the many dualities threading their way through The Moor's Last Sigh, is the one of good art versus bad. The book's title actually refers to two paintings entitled, The Moor's Last Sigh. One is painted by Aurora, the other by her one-time-admirer-turned-nemesis, Vasco Miranda. Aurora's work is a masterpiece, the last in a series of allegorical paintings in which her son serves as subject. It becomes the symbol that finally gives Moor the humanity he so desires. Mir