Victory City: A Novel

Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Part One: Birth Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Part Two: Exile Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Part Three: Glory Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Part Four: Fall Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Dedication Acknowledgments Other Titles About the Author Landmarks Cover Cover Title Page Contents Start Copyright Print Page List v vi 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 vii 333 334 ii 335 336 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF CANADA
 Copyright © 2023 Salman Rushdie
 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
 Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in 2023 by Alfred A.
 Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto, and simultaneously in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Vintage, part of the Penguin Random House group of companies. Distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
 www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
 Knopf Canada and colophon are registered trademarks.
 Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
 Title: Victory City / Salman Rushdie.
 Names: Rushdie, Salman, author
 Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2022023504X | Canadiana (ebook) 20220235058
 | ISBN 9781039000551 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781039000568 (EPUB)
 Classification: LCC PR6068.U757 V53 2023 | DDC 823/.914—dc23
 Victory City is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
 Cover illustration: Sonali Zohra
 ep_prh_6.0_142519746_c0_r0
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 
 
 Part One: Birth
 
 Chapter 1
 
 
 Chapter 2
 
 
 Chapter 3
 
 
 Chapter 4
 
 
 Chapter 5
 
 
 Chapter 6
 
 
 Chapter 7
 
 
 Chapter 8
 
 
 
 Part Two: Exile
 
 Chapter 9
 
 
 Chapter 10
 
 
 Chapter 11
 
 
 Chapter 12
 
 
 Chapter 13
 
 
 
 Part Three: Glory
 
 Chapter 14
 
 
 Chapter 15
 
 
 Chapter 16
 
 
 Chapter 17
 
 
 Chapter 18
 
 
 Chapter 19
 
 
 
 Part Four: Fall
 
 Chapter 20
 
 
 Chapter 21
 
 
 Chapter 22
 
 
 
 Dedication
 Acknowledgments
 By Salman Rushdie
 About the Author
 
 
 
 
 PARTONE
 | Birth |
 
 
 
 1
 
 
 
 
 
 On the last day of her life, when she was two hundred and forty-seven years old, the blind poet, miracle worker, and prophetess Pampa Kampana completed her immense narrative poem about Bisnaga and buried it in a clay pot sealed with wax in the heart of the ruined Royal Enclosure, as a message to the future. Four and a half centuries later we found that pot and read for the first time the immortal masterpiece named the Jayaparajaya, meaning “Victory and Defeat,” written in the Sanskrit language, as long as the Ramayana, made up of twenty-four thousand verses, and we learned the secrets of the empire she had concealed from history for more than one hundred and sixty thousand days. We knew only the ruins that remained, and our memory of its history was ruined as well, by the passage of time, the imperfections of memory, and the falsehoods of those who came after. As we read Pampa Kampana’s book the past was regained, the Bisnaga Empire was reborn as it truly had been, its women warriors, its mountains of gold, its generosity of spirit and its times of mean-spiritedness, its weaknesses and its strengths. We heard for the first time the full account of the kingdom that