Tab Article

Ratings: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Genre: Literary Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Satire

Book Review:
Salman Rushdie's ''Fury'' is a novel that crackles with energy—a dark, brilliant, and often hilarious meditation on rage in all its forms. Set in New York City at the turn of the millennium, it captures a moment of unprecedented wealth and power, and the furies that simmer beneath the surface.

The protagonist is Malik Solanka, a Cambridge-educated historian of ideas and dollmaker extraordinaire. He's a man who has achieved success—his handmade dolls have become a cult phenomenon—but he's also a man consumed by an inner fury he doesn't understand. One day, without warning, he walks out on his wife and young son and flees to New York, seeking to ''erase'' himself.

But New York is not a city for erasure. It's a city of fury. Cab drivers scream at each other. A serial killer is murdering women with a lump of concrete. The streets are filled with petty spats and bone-deep resentments. Solanka is engulfed by it all, even as he tries to lose himself in the crowd.

He becomes entangled with two women: a mysterious young woman in a D'Angelo baseball cap, and another with whom he will fall in love, drawn toward a different fury whose roots lie on the far side of the world. Through these relationships, Rushdie explores the many forms of rage—personal and political, intimate and global, comic and tragic.

Rushdie's prose is, as always, extraordinary. The Financial Times writes: ''He writes like an angel: an erudite, playful, imaginative, wildly intelligent angel... the cadences of every paragraph are graceful as landing swans... Rushdie is an irrepressibly playful entertainer, as well as a web-weaving storyteller.'' That's exactly right. The sentences are luminous, the metaphors startling, the wordplay delightful.

The novel is also a love letter to New York—a city Rushdie clearly adores. He captures its energy, its chaos, its contradictions. The Independent calls it ''thrilling writing... a simmering novel, as crammed with passion and potholes as a New York street.'' GQ notes that ''Rushdie has found inspiration in New York, and pulls apart the city's every nuance in this dark and brilliant comedy.''

But ''Fury'' is more than just a portrait of a city. It's a meditation on the nature of rage itself—where it comes from, what it does to us, how it shapes our lives. Solanka's fury is personal, rooted in his past, his relationships, his sense of self. But it's also connected to larger furies: the violence of history, the chaos of the modern world, the anger that seems to infect everyone.

For Rushdie fans, ''Fury'' is essential reading—a novel that showcases his gifts at full power. For newcomers, it's a challenging but rewarding introduction to one of our greatest living novelists. As the Guardian writes, ''Rushdie is a very great novelist—our greatest.''

Highly recommended for readers who appreciate literary fiction that takes risks, that makes you think and feel and laugh all at once. Just be prepared: the fury might be contagious.