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"The Gardener of Stories": Salman Rushdie 's Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Unlike Rushdie’s best-known novels, Haroun and the Sea of Stories’ has no apparent direct relevance to Indian or Pakistani history, to the plight of the immigrant in Britain or to the question of religion. At first sight, this book looks like a return to the fantastic mode exemplified by Grimus. Here the mood and framework of reference are more definitely those of a story for children, though, as in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, a number of allusions are made to realities or texts which a child could not possibly understand. So the reader is invited to consider the novel as belonging to the sub-genre of the children’s story which only adults can really understand. Many reviewers of this text written completely since Rushdie was forced to go into hiding have been attentive to signs which might suggest parallels with the author’s own plight. It does contain an allegory of the fight between the imagination, the forces of freedom and those of obscurantism. There are also echoes of a difficult marital situation which leads to the deserted husband