The dramatic opening passage in Rushdie's newest spellbinding and provocative improvisation on ancient texts and historic events builds the frame for all that follows and introduces the wily narrator, a self-described "spinner of yarns" who loosely translates a newly discovered epic poem in which the extraordinary poet recounts her magical life. After witnessing the fiery destruction of her fourteenth-century world at age nine, Pampa Kampana is rescued by her namesake goddess, who grants her mighty powers, a quixotic mission--to improve the lives of women--and youthful longevity. So begins Pampa's 247-year saga as she creates the Bisnaga Empire and its Victory City, the site of endless schemes, dynastic violence, love and heartbreak, golden eras of equality and cultural flourishing and dark times of rigid religiosity and insidious oppression. This cosmopolitan place is home ground for resistance movements, women warriors with supernatural abilities, and murderous royals. Forever young as her lovers and children age, Pampa is a queen worshipped and revered, feared, exiled and betrayed. With sly and incisive asides from the narrator about the vicissitudes of human nature and the tides of conquest and insurrection, tyranny and freedom, Rushdie's bewitching and suspenseful, romantic and funny, tragic and incisive tale, rooted in the history of Vijayanagar, the fallen capital of a vanquished empire in southern India, is resplendent in its celebration of women and the age-old magic of storytelling.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Readers will be primed for this latest transporting and sharply insightful fable from brilliantly imaginative and wise Rushdie, a literary giant and courageous free-speech advocate.

Rushdie returns to the realm of magic realism and to the India of his birth. Vijayanagar, or Victory City, was a real place, the seat of a powerful empire that occupied most of southern India. Rushdie borrows from history to depict siblings and their families who'd stop at little to gain power; as one of his interlocutors, a European explorer, spits, "I wrote in my journal that Deva Raya and his murderous brothers only cared about getting drunk and fucking. I should have added, and killing one another." Rushdie places this history within a web of mythology: His Vijayanagar is the creation of a goddess-channeling girl named Pampa Kampana, most of whose 247-year-long life is devoted to creating the city, populating it, and then trying, usually to little avail, to keep the place from falling into chaos. Pampa has a mission: Witnessing her mother's purdah, she is resolved to "laugh at death and turn her face toward life." Alas, she learns, life is complicated and, as Rushdie winks, "deity's bounty was always a two-edged sword." Like Pampa Kampana, Rushdie has a fine old time of worldbuilding, creating a vast space in which glittering palaces and smoky temples stand in contrast with mangroves and wildernesses ruled by "tigers as big as a house." Throughout, Pampa moves between royals, having "achieved the unusual feat of being queen...in two successive reigns, the consort of consecutive kings, who were also brothers," while taking time to craft a verse epic recounting her creation--an epic that, as will happen, is lost for centuries. Rushdie reflects throughout on the nature of history and storytelling, with Pampa Kampana's creations learning who they are only through the "imaginary narrative" that is whispered to them as they sleep and with Vijayanagar's rulers, along with their subjects, the victims of historical amnesia who "exist now only in words. A grand entertainment, in a tale with many strands, by an ascended master of modern legends. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Rushdie (Midnight's Children) conjures a rich if undercooked story of a doomed empire and its creator, a woman who lived to be 247. A Sanskrit manuscript is found buried in a clay pot in present-day southern India. On it is a narrative poem by Pampa Kampana, who, as a child in the 14th century, is granted magical abilities by a goddess to empower women. After nine silent years in a cave, Pampa is visited by two soldiers turned cowherds. Pampa hands them a sack of seeds and instructs them to "grow a city." Through their work, Pampa conjures the city of Bisnaga, where people are "born full-grown from the brown earth." Though Bisnaga's palace guards are strong and noble women, the male soldiers sent out to conquer the surrounding lands are greedy and ruthless. Having taken a turn away from the promise early on of a feminine utopia, the novel grows ponderous with yet another story of violent, narrow-minded men. Still, there's plenty of clever commentary on human corruption and religious purity ("In this way Pampa learned the lesson every creator must learn, even God himself. Once you had created your characters, you had to be bound by their choices"). Fans of Rushdie's magical realism and narrative trickery will find much to admire, even if this won't be remembered as one of his better works. (Feb.)