The hero of [the] intricately plotted [Grimus] is Flapping Eagle, an outcast Indian weary of the immortality conferred on him some 700 years ago by a mysterious elixir…. Rushdie unwinds solutions to his various conundrums—involving a misappropriated alien artifact and a plurality of probability-continuums—with inventive wit and an elegant sense of pacing. The story is ultimately overburdened with ingenuities, but for the most part they are real ingenuities. An imagination to watch.

"Fiction: 'Grimus'," in Kirkus Reviews (copyright © 1979 The Kirkus Service, Inc.), Vol. XLVII, No. 11, June 1, 1979, p. 664.