If heaven and earth were to burst into minute particles it would be no more than a leaf falling from a tree; and if everything were to be annihilated, from the fish to the moon, would there be found in the depths of a pit the leg of a lame ant? In Haroun and the Sea of Stories, an interesting play on the literal and the figurative meanings is (.

The repeated use of the conjunction “but” and the binary rhythm create sharp contrasts which enhance the character’s absolute mediocrity. For a first novel, however, Grimus is still a major accomplishment, and remains one of my favourite of Rushdie’s books (more so than the to-my-mind over-rated Satanic Verses but nowhere near the genius of Midnight’s Children) although Rushdie himself has no high opinion of it. There is no reason to suppose that Eagle has the willpower or the morality to resist the power of Grimus.

The curse that plagues him is strikingly expressed by the god Axona through the juxtaposition of terse, anaphoric prophecies: “Whatsoever you touch, is soiled; whatsoever you grasp, you break; any person you love is stifled by your love; any person you hate is purified by your loathing” (87). While this is a typical theme in SF literature (humanity travelling to distant suns, and making their home on other planets), it is also a major theme in Salman Rushdie literature. In this respect, it is significant that the author should have chosen “Grimus” over other possible permutations of letters (Urgims, Rumgis, Srigum.

That which is complete is also dead” (225): the iconoclastic character of Rushdie’s first novel challenges the notion that literary or cultural paradigms should be viewed as immune from change and keep an immutable form. the influence of the guidelines and regulations of prizes on the production of literary works from Salman Rushdie’s novel Grimus (1975).That is what makes the novel so muddled within genre, and is arguably the root cause of its critical failure.