In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms in 14th-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who begins to speak out of the girl's mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana's comprehension, the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga—"victory city"—the wonder of the world.
What’s important is that Victory City is a triumph—not because it exists, but because it is utterly enchanting. Words are the only victors ... Victory City is a cheerful little vessel, despite its ultimate destination. Its myths of origin are recounted with glee ... Rushdie plays adroitly with the metafictional and political implications of 'real' people and a 'real' polity being created out of imaginary backstories.
As a reader whose knowledge of medieval Indian history is sparse—if I can claim it to be existent at all—I was surprised to later discover just how much historical fact was embedded in Rushdie’s narrative ... Victory City is many things: a myth, an epic, a polemic parable, a real-world historical landscape flattened into a fable and embellished by fantasy. It is not, however, subtle in its messaging; it is a firm stand against the right-wing religious fanaticism of the day.
Mr. Rushdie’s most explicit imagining of Utopia, yet even this fairy-tale civilization is riven by human folly ... We don’t yet know whether Victory City was finished before he was nearly killed by a knife-wielding fanatic in August or whether he completed it after the attack. But the novel’s levity and friendliness seem profound in either case. Amidst horrific violence he has brought forth a work of cheerful fabulism that puts far more emphasis on 'magic' than 'realism'—a warm space in which we might imagine a better world than our own.
