The novel as global metaphor is currently unfashionable, except when it comes in the guise of science fiction or political satire. Grimus is neither of these, though it spills over into both areas. Dimension-fever, thought-forms, a mysterious Effect haunt the book like the monoliths of 2001: forces to be reckoned with because they are never quite accounted for. But Salman Rushdie doesn't posit a hypothetical future, or warn of things to come: indeed, he makes it plain that what he is writing about is, approximately, the here and now. His ambitious, strikingly confident first novel is a convoluted fable about the human condition: more particularly, about the enduring need for myth and its constricting effect on the individual.

Like most fables, Grimus is cast in the form of an odyssey in search of an ultimate truth. Flapping Eagle, a renegade Red Indian, is given the blessing or curse of...