Salman Rushdie’s new novel reminds us how his writing changed the world

On the Shelf Victory City By Salman Rushdie Random House: 352 pages, $30 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. The Rushdie who went into hiding because of the 1989 fatwa over his book “The Satanic Verses,” eventually reentered public life, big-time, and was brutally attacked onstage last August. “The public attack on Rushdie’s life, while publicly exercising his right to free speech, will surely affect how his work is received and, broadly, how we perceive the role of writers as public intellectuals,” said Ana Cristina Mendes, a professor at the University of Lisbon and author of the book “Salman Rushdie in the Cultural Marketplace.” Rushdie is, especially now, a kind of secular saint who was nearly sacrificed for free speech. “Midnight’s Children,” published in 1981, is Rushdie’s greatest work, Johnson says, because it is “a kaleidoscopic, idiosyncratic, virtuosic book of magic realism that interweaves an astonishing number of themes, images, characters, cultural motifs and histories.” “As someone who was born and raised in India,” Johnson added, “I can say that Rushdie manages to capture voices, places and events both accurately and vibrantly, bringing them to life. Some commentators, Mendes noted, “had it that Rushdie’s investment in public performance was intended to court controversy after the fatwa; that he capitalized on his experience of being forced into hiding ; that he fed a public perception of a controversial figure to boost book sales.” The August attack on him — 33 years after the fatwa issued by Ayatollah Khomeini — proved that every precaution taken was necessary.