BookBrowse Reviews Victory City by Salman Rushdie

The city Vijayanagara was founded in the 14th century by two brothers, Hakka and Bukka Sangama, and quickly sprawled into a large empire that covered much of southern India. Hakka and Bukka became the empire's first kings, respectively, and the empire lasted over two hundred years, expanding and contracting with wars, cycling through kings via death and assassination and coups. Salman Rushdie's latest novel, Victory City, traces this empire's history, remaining, it seems, pretty loyal to the facts. Where Rushdie diverts from actual history is the main character he puts at the center of his novel: Pampa Kampana, a woman with magical powers who is the real creator of the city and the behind-the-scenes brains driving many of its operations.

So Victory City seems at first to be a feminist, fictional retelling of a male-dominated history. At age nine, Pampa is visited/inhabited by a ...