SOURCE: "Another Rushdie Novel, Another Bitter Epilogue," in The New York Times, December 2, 1995.

In the following essay, Burns describes reaction in India to The Moor's Last Sigh.

For Anuj Malhotra, a bookseller in this capital's affluent Khan Market district, the publication here this summer of Salman Rushdie's latest novel, The Moor's Last Sigh, promised to be the literary event of the year.

Mr. Rushdie has been a best seller in India, where he was born and lived until his family left Bombay for England 30 years ago. With his sales running into tens of thousands of copies, he has held his own with writers of more obviously popular genres like Jackie Collins, Barbara Taylor Bradford and India's own novelist of sex and romance, Shobha De.

Expectations were higher than ever for the new Rushdie book, which chronicles the history of an Indian family over several generations. Indian critics have...