"Niets duurt eeuwig dacht hij, achter gesloten oogleden, ergens boven Klein-Azië. Misschien dat droefenis het continuum is waardoor een mensenleven zich beweegt, en vreugde enkel een reeks bliepjes, eilanden in de stroom. En als het geen droefenis is, dan toch droefgeestigheid..."

Question: What is the opposite of faith?

Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself is a kind of belief.

Doubt.

This might be one of the most difficult books to read, rivaling Absalom, Absalom!. While that one was a static labyrinth that could be resolved with the right guide, this novel is more like a maze that, with its fluidity, changes form nearly every chapter. This is most likely the purest form of magical realism available in written form and the dreamlike quality plunges the reader in and out of reality and artificiality, from one story to another which takes place in that story or out of it or just left of above it or... Basically ,it plays jumprope with the narrative structure, which is the most difficult part to get behind since the amount of references and implications tend to meander, and you end up losing sight of the rope. I do wish there were more studies done on this because Rushdie's prose is just so incredibly beautiful and so full of depth that you just sometimes stare at the page in disbelief. It does prove the dichotomy of east, west, when the literary world places so much emphasis on white authors (no matter how deserving) and leaves writers of the diaspora in the dust. With that said, East, West being such a stunning piece of art made me believe I could tackle this but while the writing made me stop in my tracks a couple times, (Our own false descriptions to counter falsehoods invented about us, concealing for reasons of security our secret selves) the thing that did it most of the time was my general confusion. The allusions here unfortunately elude me, and the narrative is a difficult one to get behind. Rushdie clearly does not believe in the "everything must have a purpose" storytelling technique, which means the novel is basically an exploded dam from page one. The best (and only) way to navigate the story is to just go along with the hundreds of tons of pressure and try not to be submerged underneath the many, many metaphors and allusions and call-backs to other stories. I could follow along slightly thanks to my indoctrination into Islam in grade school, however by those final hundred pages the only blue I saw was not that of the sky but of the ocean around me as I succumb to the fact that this book is way too above my pay grade.

Caught in the aspic of his adopted language, he had begun to hear, in India's Babel, an ominous warning: don't come back again. When you have stepped through the looking-glass, you step back at your own peril. The mirror may cut you to shreds.

The real life "controversy" about this book is what drives many people to pick it up but I think where the novel shines most brightly is when it focuses on the dichotomy of the east vs the west. It's what anyone with an immigrant background will feel a kinship to and that's the area that Rushdie truly excels in, and while the criticisms of Islam (ones blown way out of proportion in the real world of course considering the fatwa decreed against Rushdie) hold merit, it's extremely difficult to follow along without a deep understanding of the religion.

A poet's work . . . to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.

Still, how many people can say they've had an entire religion turned against them and have been stabbed in the eye for their art? It's even more baffling when you realize that the main critique Rushdie has against Islam and the prophets is the reliability of their message. And he's right, of course. How could we ever know (in the case of the words of the Prophets being true) if the message lent to them was one of God or a trickster Satan?

What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? – The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.

This is the kind of art that will stick to your soul no matter how little you understand it. It speaks to the innate belief that all of us have to something in life. So, although I would not classify the experience as anywhere near enjoyable, I do think this work deserves to be read and studied as the sublime work it is.