Death and the Grotesque in Salman Rushdie's Fiction

[Added by George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History, Brown University]

The following image by the great British illustrator E. J. Sullivan, which he created to illustrate Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, shares many qualities with Rushdie's Shame and Midnight's Children. What does the way Death hides behind a grotesque comic mask suggest about Rushdie's style? Precisely what features of his style, subject, and plot strike you as grotesque?


Postcolonial Web Pakinstan OV Rushdie OV Midnight's Children Shame OV