MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewContrivances abound in this first novel — both in plot and in language ... Reclamation skews romantic through the overuse of aphorism ... When the story is propelled by political cynicism, by cigarettes and vodka, one can see streaks of Emmanuel Carrère and Jean-Patrick Manchette in the writing. Cunning and unstinting, humanist and self-aware, Vardiashvili nears noir excellence. Even more exquisite are the descriptions of Tbilisi, written as though the author was long at sea and is now desperately grasping for connection ... The most memorable passages in evoke a thorough understanding of war, escape and violence; in one, old gravestones have been effaced of their names by the rain. In these moments, this novel becomes a palimpsest, reflecting the cyclical nature of familial death and individual reconstitution. The unstable way we return home.
Salman Rushdie
PanDrift MagWarmed-over and didactic ... Victory City is, in many and the worst ways, classic Rushdie ... It is difficult not to read Victory City as a rehabilitative feminist fable, especially coming from a writer whose women have been criticized as reductions: sexless ice queens, villainous crones, fast-talking trollops ... My hope was that Victory City, an Indian novel through and through, would mark the return of Rushdie’s critical and creative faculties. No such luck. He has forgone the potent nebulousness of colonialism, displacement, and exile for mannerist expressions of his own prosaic wisdom ... If Victory City is any indication, late Rushdie is issuing an insouciant response to writers today: anything you can do, I can do more gratingly.
