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Paper short abstract

In Midnight's Children (1981) and Victory City (2023) Salman Rushdie's forest tales draw on belief narratives and other conceptualisations from Indian folklore. The human-nature encounter results here in the protagonists achieving personal progress, the forest functioning as a catalyst.

Paper long abstract

In Indian culture, forests have been venerated for centuries, and indeed millennia. The significant role of forests as specific places is evident in belief narratives related to the creation myths, such as the Mahabharata or the Ramayana. This broadly inspires Indian Anglophone writers. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children and Victory City are novels that can be interpreted as metaphorically depicting, in one way or another, the birth or creation of India and her ongoing development. In each of these novels a portion of the narrative is set in a forest environment, i.e. "In the Sundarbans" and "Exile", respectively. The forest is conceptualised here as an enclosure, a place, or even a distinct reality that exists in parallel to that found outside.

The present paper will examine the characteristics employed by the author in order to define these forest environments as enchanted sites as well as parallel realities, and how this impacts the protagonists who find themselves there. The forest, into which the characters retreat from their former, oppressive reality, is initially presented as an unpredictable, hostile and even dangerous environment. Nevertheless, through a meaningful interaction between the forest's inhabitants, both animal and superhuman, and the newly arrived characters, as well as through the forest's transformative powers, the latter are ultimately enabled to achieve significant personal growth while their needs and/or desires are being fulfilled.

To this purpose, the author makes use of India's belief narratives, particularly myths, cosmological imagery and the popular traditions, the subject of analysis of this paper.