SOURCE: "Salaam Bombay!," in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4823, September 9, 1995, p. 3.

In the following review, Pamuk considers Rushdie's treatment of his homeland in his fiction, most recently in The Moor's Last Sigh.

Peppered with politics and betrayal, sugared with art and love, well spiced with pimps, beauty queens, gangsters, freaks, fanatics and lunatics, The Moor's Last Sigh is a grand family chronicle of the passionate love and business affairs of four generations of a grotesque and rich Indian family. This book, in its scope, its ambition, and its magic, most resembles Midnight's Children, the best of Salman Rushdie's previous novels. The fact that The Moor's Last Sigh is a lesser performance is nothing to do with Rushdie's creative powers as a verbal illusionist. Filled with puns and verbal games, buffoonery and scenes of slapstick comedy, it proves that Rushdie is one of the most brilliant magicians of the...