"A mixture of science fiction and folktale, past and future, primitive
and present-day . . . Thunderous and touching."
-Financial Times
After drinking an elixir that bestows immortality upon him, a young
Indian named Flapping Eagle spends the next seven hundred years sailing
the seas with the blessing-and ultimately the burden-of living forever.
Eventually, weary of the sameness of life, he journeys to the
mountainous Calf Island to regain his mortality. There he meets other
immortals obsessed with their own stasis and sets out to scale the
island's peak, from which the mysterious and corrosive Grimus Effect
emits. Through a series of thrilling quests and encounters, Flapping
Eagle comes face-to-face with the island's creator and unwinds the
mysteries of his own humanity. Salman Rushdie's celebrated debut novel
remains as powerful and as haunting as when it was first published more
than thirty years ago.
"A book to be read twice . . . [Grimus] is literate, it is fun, it is
meaningful, and perhaps most important, it pushes the boundaries of the
form outward."
-Los Angeles Times