The Boulder of History is Rolling in Salman Rushdie’s Novel .

• Main Author: Dana Bădulescu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Facultatea de Stiinte Politice, SNSPA 2011-10-01
• Series: Sfera Politicii
• Subjects: hybridity; Bombayness; palimpsest; intertextuality; spectrality; erasure
• Online Access: http://www.sferapoliticii.ro/sfera/164/art11-Badulescu.php

This paper looks into the artful way in which Salman Rushdie makes the human body the site of the nation’s conflicts in The Moor’s Last Sigh. I argue that the Moor’s story is a well-wrought „suture” of the wounds of history. The novel’s title is a metaphor of the dialogic relation between the body and the world concentrated into the sigh. The Moor’s Last Sigh is a palimpsested saga of pluralism, multiplicity and hybridity. In this novel, Rushdie purports to address the issue of violence at various levels, and to suggest that communal violence stirs the potential resources of aggression which are dormant in any individual. Salman Rushdie’s tenth book lends itself to endless interpretations through its recurrent fantastic images and the inspiring Alhambra Palace of Spain.