Exploring magical realism and postmodernism in Salman Rushdie’s Victory City

Abstract

Victory City takes readers to a fascinating adventure into the past of one of India’s prosperous cities, Vijayanagar. In Salman Rushdie’s alternative storytelling of the history of the city, the central focus is put on one Pampa Kampana blessed with divine power. Recounting the magical rise of the city and its inevitable decline, the novel problematizes historical representation. This paper evaluates the novel as a historiographic metafiction and examines its magical realist and postmodernist elements. Through close textual analysis, the study highlights the sceptical inscription of historical representation, the conflicted depiction of metanarratives and ideologies, the use of self reflexivity, narrative plurality, and intertextuality in order to establish its postmodernist stance. Similarly, the portrayal of realism juxtaposed with the magical, and the fluctuating development of the magical and the real within the narration are also analysed to comprehend its magical realist features. The intersection of magical realism and postmodernism in the novel depicts that history is challenged and re-casted through the scepticism propelled at the normativity of realism and the acceptance of the unfamiliarity of the magical.