But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. As years pass, rulers come and go, battles are won and lost, and allegiances shift, the very fabric of Bisnaga becomes an ever more complex tapestry

Salman Rushdie has created a radiant myth about myth-making. Victory City is a book that privileges the ethical imagination and the unmistakable permanence of storytelling. Within these pages, you will find global travellers, rapacious kings, cave dwellers, prophets of doom and, at its fierce and eloquent heart, a storyteller who reminds that death may take away a lot of things, but never the power of our words. Beyond war, beyond violence, even beyond life itself, the story, and the storyteller, lasts. COLUM McCANN.Victory City is vast and deep, soaring and scintillating. Every page is magical, every page is gorgeous. In the way of a significant work of art, it does not resemble any other novel I could name. A major accomplishment by one of our greatest living writers. -- MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM.No one, and I mean no one, can bring an entire world to life with the authority, wisdom, humour and panache of Salman Rushdie. In the pantheon of his novels, Victory City stands out as a book of particular imaginative achievement. It defies category, but it invites pleasure. GARY SHTEYNGART.Salman Rushdie is a genius and I wish he could read me a story - or a chapter of his book - every night before bed. The scale and scope of his intellect and his imagination is googolplex, as big as infinity, and then some. In Victory City, he spins an epic tale that brings us back to the key questions of what it is to be human, to be authentic, to love and to grieve. A. M. HOMES.This is Salman Rushdie at his most virtuosic, a wondrous tale of medieval India which is also, as ever, a fable about the triumph of life - in all its joyous, messy excess - over the forces of fanaticism and darkness. HARI KUNZRU