The Moor’s Last Sigh: The Reality of Multiplicity

Pages:178-185
Ashish Sangwan (Independent Research Scholar, Rohtak)

The Moor’s Last Sigh shares the basic structure of Rushdie’s immensely successful novel Midnight’s Children, though there is a significant difference, the first person narrator of Midnight’s Children Saleem represents India, but the Moor embodies the minorities of the nation. Apparently the novel offers a discourse about art and culture but it gradually unfolds into a comprehensive philosophy of various challenges haunting the nation. Like Midnight’s Children and Shame, The Moor’s Last Sigh is a novel with large ambitions composed on a grand scale. The ‘genesis’ of the novel is set in Cochin and the ‘apocalypse’ part of about last fifty pages is set in the doomed Bombay and Spain. The body of the work tells the story of the life of Moraes “ the Moor” in Bombay. It is a tale of the fall from grace of the da Gama-Zogoiby family and their quest for finding a flavour in the boiling cauldron of the Indian cultural curry. This quest helps the reader realize the beauty of the irrecoverable purity, and therefore kaleidoscopically rich composite culture of India.