Rushdie explains: "A terrible thing happens to a father, the child blames himself and wishes to rescue the father." (113)

The germ of the story was bath-time stories he told Zafar. Rushdie says: "I would have these basic motifs, like the Sea of Stories, but each time I would improvise--not only to please him but to test myself, to see if I could just say something and take it elsewhere."

He began to write the novel in the summer of 1989, a few months after the fatwa.

Supposedly begun as a bedtime story for his son, Haroun is a fantasy about the nature of fiction and the threat of silence

On 60 Minutes Rushdie proclaimed: "Haroun is a tale. Even to call it a parable is too much. It must have, as they say, no designs upon it. Zafar will not read it to advance the public good, or even to comfort his father. He must read it for fun."

Rushdie calls the book "a journey from sadness to joy."

Generally also read as an allegory of Rushdie's predicament in the wake of the fatwa.

Rushdie becomes the storyteller Rashid Khalifa who loses the gift of gab and can no longer entertain.

Rashid's condition is linked to a fanatic Cult of Dumbness and Muteness that wants to wipe out not only made-up tales, but also human speech (101)

Thus the novel contains an allegory of the fight between the imagination, the forces of freedom, and the forces of obscurantism. Rather than retreating under the death threats, Rushdie reiterates the importance of literature and celebrates the triumph of storytelling and imagination over raw power and dogmatism.

The novel also contains echoes of a difficult marital situation.

There are a lot of literary and pop culture allusions in the story:

One Thousand and One Nights

• Buttoo's houseboat where Rashid and Haroun spend the night of their adventures is called Arabian Nights Plus One (50)
• Gup City is built on an archipelago of one thousand and one small islands (87)
• Iff the Water Genie suggests a punishment for Rashid of writing "I must not spy" one thousand and one times (98)

Third voyage of Gulliver's Travels

Snooty Buttoo's exclamation of Fantastick (52) recalls The Fantasticks, the long running off-Broadway musical.

" Mission impossible," (56) says Iff the Water Genie when Haroun finds him trying to disconnect the Story Tap.

The Walrus, the Grand Controller of the P2C2E, is surrounded by Eggheads (58); this description recalls the line "I am the eggman, they are the eggmen--I am the walrus" from "I am the Walrus," a song on the Beatles' album Magical Mystery Tour; also an echo of the walrus from Through the Looking Glass

Iff has a blue beard (Bluebeard).

"Water, water everywhere; nor any trace of land" echoes lines from "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Plentimaw fish are called "hunger artists" in an echo of the Kafka short story.

Pleasure Garden of Gup City has "pleasure domes" (88), a reminder of the pleasure domes in Coleridge's "Kubla Khan."

Eggheads see the Walrus as having a luxurious mustache (90), reminding the reader of "The Emperor's New Clothes."

Butt the Hoopoe observes that Khattam-Shud "sits at the heart of darkness" (145), a reference to the Joseph Conrad novella.

Compare and contrast the Land of Gup and the Land of Chup. What aspects of story and perceptions of story do these two nations represent? What aspects of the real world do these two nations represent?

This novel asks the questions:

Why is storytelling important?

Why must one defend literature against tyranny.

The way the story answers these questions will bring you to the theme of the story.

InfoMarks (About InfoMarks)

Reviews of Haroun and the Sea of Stories