Subversion of History and the Creation of Alternative Realities in Salman Rushdie

Abstract

This paper analyses the existent relationship between historical reality and fiction in Rushdie’s three most important novels Shame, Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses. In the act of remembering, history becomes personal and fragmentary, and this gives the author the opportunity to offering alternative historical versions of events under the mask of several textual modes such as parody, allegory, myth, film, dreams, hallucinations, etc. These new visions of the world and history, moreover, liberate both the author and reader from the restrictions of what is considered to be real.