Grimus.: A Novel.

London: Victor Gollancz Ltd,, 1975. First edition, first impression, signed by the author on the title page. This is Rushdie's first novel, an attempt to amalgamate the eastern and western influences on his writing. He wrote: "I wanted to find a way of taking themes out of Oriental thought and expressing them in a western novel" (Cundy, p. 27). Grimus is a complex experiment, blending mythical narrative, fantasy, and science fiction. It was described by the author as a "quite clever book. But that's not entirely a compliment. It's too clever for its own good" (quoted in Johansen, p. 24). "Rushdie blurs the distinction between magic and science by keeping the reader in the dark as to the nature of the fantastical events in the story until well into the narrative, so that the fantastical events of the story appear at first to be the result of magic; it is only later that the reader understands that the 'magic' in the story is produced by a technologically advanced race of aliens" (Braun, 19-20). Octavo. Original purple boards, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Spine panel of jacket slightly faded, tiny nick to one corner, not price clipped: a fine copy in near-fine dust jacket. Michele Braun, "Science Fiction as Experimental Ground for Issues of the Postcolonial Novel", in Masood Ashraf Raja, Jason W. Ellis, & Swaralipi Nandi, eds, The Postnational Fantasy, 2011; Catherine Cundy, Salman Rushdie, 1996; J. B. Johansen, "The Flight from the Enchanter", in M. D. Fletcher, ed., Reading Rushdie, 1994.