Salman Rushdie, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

Catherine Pesso-Miquel (Université Lyon II)
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Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

(henceforth

Two Years

) is the title of Salman Rushdie’s tenth novel. The author has also written two books intended for children, the second of which,

Luka and the Fire of Life

(2010) tells a story very similar to what unfolds in

Two Years

: a female, a Mother/Goddess figure, fights the battle against the forces of bigotry and evil that threaten to eradicate freedom of thought and expression, and, helped by characters whose courage and determination compensate for their lack of actual power, wins the fight.

The ciphers in the title add up to 1001, the “magical”, palindromic number dramatized in The Arabian Nights, from which Rushdie borrows the figure of the jinn, and the structural device of a multiplicity of embedded stories.

2541 words

Citation: Pesso-Miquel, Catherine. "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 August 2016 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35680, accessed 28 March 2024.]

35680 Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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