Editors Reads Verdict
Rushdie's most purely playful novel in decades — written after his 2022 near-fatal stabbing, it reads as a testament to storytelling's ability to outlast the events it describes, and the Indian mythological material gives it a grounding his more recent work has sometimes lacked.
What We Loved
- The mythological register — drawn from actual accounts of the Vijayanagara Empire — gives the novel a genuine historical grounding
- Pampa Kampana is Rushdie's most fully realised female protagonist
- Written after his stabbing and published during his recovery, the novel's engagement with mortality and storytelling's defiance of it is genuinely moving
Minor Drawbacks
- The episodic structure of an empire over centuries can feel summary rather than novelistic in places
- Less dense and allusive than Midnight's Children — some Rushdie readers want more
Key Takeaways
- → The imagination that creates an empire — that wills it into being from language — is also the imagination that preserves it after the empire falls
- → Women in power in historical Indian states occupied a specific position that was both more and less constrained than in European equivalents
- → A story told about an empire is a different kind of power than the empire itself — it outlasts it
| Author | Salman Rushdie |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Random House |
| Pages | 343 |
| Published | February 7, 2023 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mythology |
| Difficulty | Intermediate |
| Best For | Rushdie readers who want his most recent and most accessible novel, and literary fiction readers interested in Indian mythology and history. |
The Blessing
When Pampa Kampana is nine years old, her mother walks into a fire. The goddess Pampa appears to the child and makes her an offer: she will live for two hundred and forty-seven years, and in that time she will create and record an empire. She breathes the city of Bisnaga into existence with her breath — literally, populating it with people by speaking their names and their natures into seeds that grow into human beings.
Victory City is the record Pampa makes of the Bisnaga empire’s rise and fall — the kings and queens and wars and conspiracies that fill the two and a half centuries of its history. It is based on the actual Vijayanagara Empire of south India, which flourished from the 14th century until its destruction by a coalition of Deccan sultanates in 1565.
The Context
Rushdie published Victory City in February 2023, less than eighteen months after being stabbed on stage at the Chautauqua Institution in August 2022 — an attack by a man who had read accounts of the fatwa against him and decided to act on them. The attack left him blind in one eye and with permanent damage to one hand.
The novel written and revised during his recovery has a specific quality: a joy in storytelling for its own sake, a delight in the inventiveness that is Rushdie’s characteristic mode, and a sense — in Pampa’s insistence on recording even as empires fall — that the act of writing is itself the argument against those who would silence it.
Our rating: 4.1/5 — Rushdie’s most playful recent novel and, in context, his most personal: a celebration of storytelling’s power to outlast the forces arrayed against it.
Reading Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "Victory City" about?
Pampa Kampana, blessed by a goddess as a child, breathes an empire into existence in 14th-century south India. The empire of Bisnaga rises and falls across two hundred and fifty years while Pampa watches, intervenes, suffers, and records — a mythological history that is also an allegory of power, imagination, and the persistence of storytelling.
Who should read "Victory City"?
Rushdie readers who want his most recent and most accessible novel, and literary fiction readers interested in Indian mythology and history.
What are the key takeaways from "Victory City"?
The imagination that creates an empire — that wills it into being from language — is also the imagination that preserves it after the empire falls Women in power in historical Indian states occupied a specific position that was both more and less constrained than in European equivalents A story told about an empire is a different kind of power than the empire itself — it outlasts it
Is "Victory City" worth reading?
Rushdie's most purely playful novel in decades — written after his 2022 near-fatal stabbing, it reads as a testament to storytelling's ability to outlast the events it describes, and the Indian mythological material gives it a grounding his more recent work has sometimes lacked.
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