Fury, Salman Rushdie

Book Review
Fury, by Salman Rushdie

What may I say about Salman Rushdie’s work that has not been said before? Still, allow me to sing his praises. Fury, his postmodern take on the novel of unbecoming, does not have the most innovative and seductive premise. A man seeks to lose himself in contemporary New York after leaving his wife and child with less than a reasonable explanation. He is, of course, battling a hidden, consuming urge that is boiling under the surface and threatening to break out at any given moment. Nothing extraordinary, one might claim, which proves how deceiving first glances can be.

Rushdie’s genius, his brilliant manipulation of the English language aside, is without a doubt his able employment of virtual and fictional reality. He succeeds where most authors fail – in the very transition between reality and its fictional counterparts. In Fury, as if to demonstrate to the reader his skill, the parallel realities are numerous and tightly interconnected.

Beneath the critique of American life, of Western Civilization even, behind a man’s midlife crisis and the human tragedy in all shapes and sizes, there lies a discussion of life, its meaning and the meaning of our most fundamental definitions. It’s a novel about each and every one of us and the human condition, affected by technological progress.