Salman Rushdie and the Urdu Tradition

Abstract

Salman Rushdie’s work has been linked to innovations in form in relation to the genre of the novel. What he has been most credited for is the bringing of subcontinental storytelling traditions into the Indian novel in English. This chapter traces these origins with reference to prose and poetry contexts of Urdu and Hindustani, so important to Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Enchantress of Florence, and Haroun and the Sea of Stories. Moreover, the chapter considers his engagement with poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a family friend and a much admired poet. Rushdie’s position in relation to Urdu opens up stylistic innovations on his part as well as an indebtedness to the storytellers and writers who have engaged with the tradition/modernity debate before him. This chapter thus considers Rushdie as part of a wider contextual framework of ideas of the secular and sacred on the Indian subcontinent, often neglected in discussions of his work.