NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The epic tale of a woman who
breathes a fantastical empire into existence, only to be consumed by
it over the centuries—from the transcendent imagination of Booker
Prize–winning, internationally bestselling author Salman Rushdie
“A major accomplishment by one of our greatest living writers .
. . It does not resemble any other novel I could name.”—Michael
Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hours
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2023: Time, The Washington
Post, The Guardian, USA Today, The Tampa Bay Times, The Week, CNBC,
Business Insider, Kirkus Reviews
In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten
kingdoms in fourteenth-century southern India, a nine-year-old girl
has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. After
witnessing the death of her mother, the grief-stricken Pampa Kampana
becomes a vessel for a goddess, who begins to speak out of the girl’s
mouth. Granting her powers beyond Pampa Kampana’s comprehension,
the goddess tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a
great city called Bisnaga—“victory city”—the wonder of the
world.
Over the next 250 years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply
interwoven with Bisnaga’s, from its literal sowing from a bag of
magic seeds to its tragic ruination in the most human of ways: the
hubris of those in power. Whispering Bisnaga and its citizens into
existence, Pampa Kampana attempts to make good on the task that the
goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal
world. 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—with Pampa Kampana at
its center.
Brilliantly styled as a translation of an ancient epic, Victory
City is a saga of love, adventure, and myth that is in itself a
testament to the power of storytelling.