The Moor's Last Sigh : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A complete book
Review: Complete because of its highly textured content, great style and depth, wry wit; it has everything. My first Rushdie novel and it blew me away; admittedly a slow reading book but well worth the effort. Everything just falls into place.

Rating:
Summary: Too many sentences, not enough story.
Review: This book really dragged towards the end. Rushdie might win literary prizes because he the master at crafting sentences, but a reader needs a well-told story. Rushdie should spend less time on linguistic cleverness (ie. Nadia Wadia) and more time on the characters.

Rating:
Summary: Rushdie's best book so far
Review: With this book, Rushdie has established himself as one of today's best writers in English. His prose is worthy of Nabokov and Joyce, creating a wonderfully colorful and exhilirating universe unlike anything else in fiction. Falsely assuming that Rushdie's notoriety was 90% Fatwa-related and only 10% earned on literary merit, I was hesitant to read any of his works; now I have read just about everything he has written and have discovered a first-class narrative artist whose latest work is also clearly his best. Whoever loves English prose at its most masterful will have to read "The Moor's Last Sigh".

Rating:
Summary: A curious book
Review: I've read most of Rushdie's stuff, and this one strikes me as somehow the most solid (not to detract from his previous works). In this novel Rushdie is foremost the story teller, and his wry comments on society, though still present, retreat somewhat. All in all a stellar effort with more of an emphasis of substance over his brillant style.

Rating:
Summary: What entertainment!
Review: Salman Rushdie has shown himself to be above sensationalism with this book. Far from the Jihad against him being his only claim to fame, this book solidifies it. I have not read such a wonderfully sarcastic, funny, and intelligent book in quite a while. Perhaps Rushdie figures himself to be another James Joyce to a smaller degree, using quite many different langauges. Luckily, I have close Indian friends and have been raised in Europe, so I humbly submit that I can read through this book whole (and laugh all the way!). Some of my friends have found this book hard reading but I think it is merely a fact of getting used to the style of writing that Rushdie employs. I highly reccomend this book to anyone!

Rating:
Summary: Quite simply, this book rocks.
Review: This weighty book is stuffed with clever writing, complex plots and is one of the best books I've ever read. It's epic-like scope will keep you realing for months after you've read it. I still say "Oh my God!" when I think about it. It also is a slow read, like the best kind of foreplay. It keeps me yearning for more Rushdie. It is also a repository of dry, situational, even metaphysical, humor. I wish I could borrow Rushdie's brain for a day just to see what's going on in there.

Rating:
Summary: Not India
Review: Rushdie approaches magical realism as he mixes the fantastic with the merely foreign in the context of recognizable Indian current events.

Rating:
Summary: Rushdie's best book yet
Review: It seems all those years in hiding have paid off in making Rushdie a truly memorable writer. I felt that Midnight's Children was way over rated and although it had it's literary moments, there was too much borrowed material and images from more seasoned writers. I've read everything known to me that has been published by him, and the Moor's Last Sigh is definitely the most linear and coherent book yet, and is a great story with strong characters. One sees a side of India so little mentioned in history books or other literature and becomes aware of it's Jewish micro-minority and the influence Portuagese travelers had on the spice trade. It later moves from Cochin to Bombay, where Hindu fundamentalists and politicians run rampant. Moor is such a sympathetic character, who certainly must represent Rushdie, when held hostage in Granada. Though it's been months since I read it, the images are still alive in my head and it is a book which I may, one day, read again. Though Rushdie is not yet Gabriel Garcia Marquez, he's getting a little closer.

Rating:
Summary: Good but not Great
Review: I enjoyed this book, but didn't love it as much as I hoped to. Rushdie seems to try a bit too hard at times to write literature. He does have some wonderful moments, though, and some very memorable phrases and use of words in the book. By the end of the book I was anxious to find out what happened but also ready for it to end.

Rating:
Summary: beautiful, funny, an immense and lovely experience
Review: This book is quite simply one of the best I have ever read. Amazingly well-written, witty, expansive and amazingly accessible, it is modern literature at its very finest. This is the first Rushdie book that I have read, and I am sorry it took me so long to take a second look at this controversial writer. I enjoyed it greatly and look forward to reading the rest of the Rushdie books. Highly recommended.