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The Moor's Last Sigh Summary
Salman Rushdie

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The Moor's Last Sigh Summary

The Moor's Last Sigh tells the family history of Moraes Zogoiby, known as "the Moor." He is the last survivor of a family descended from the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama (ca.1469-1524), who sailed to India in search of spice and whose offspring grew rich in shipping it to the West. Among his ancestors, Moraes also numbers Boabdil (Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad XI, ca. 1460-1527), the last Muslim king in Spain, forced in 1492 to surrender his city to Ferdinand and Isabella. The spot from which Boabdil gazed for the last time at Granada is today a tourist attraction, known as 'The Last Sigh of the Moor.' His descendents, who made their way to southern India, took, as their family name, his nickname, "Zogoiby" - "The Unfortunate." Another branch of the family descended from Black Jews who immigrated to Cochin, India, and built a synagogue in 1568. It, too, is... View more of the The Moor's Last Sigh Summary

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Salman Rushdie Biography (2)

Salman Rushdie

1,592 words, approx. 6 pages

The Indian/British author Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 1947) was a political parablist whose work often focused on outrages of history and particularly of religions. His book The Satanic Verses earned h... Read more

(Ahmed) Salman Rushdie

7,076 words, approx. 24 pages

Salman Rushdie embodies in his own life and in his writings the conundrums of the postcolonial author, writing within the tradition of Indo-English literature while simultaneously appealing to the con... Read more

Essays & Analysis (28)

Critical Review by Bruce King

640 words, approx. 3 pages

In the following review, King offers a mixed review of The Moor's Last Sigh, contending that Rushdie “always manages to write powerfully about the defining issues of our time.” At... Read more

Critical Review by Aamer Hussein

1,159 words, approx. 4 pages

In the following review, Hussein relates the plot of The Moor's Last Sigh. Moraes Zogoiby, nicknamed Moor—the half-Jewish, half-Christian narrator of The Moor's Last Sigh—i... Read more

Critical Review by Jessica Hagedorn

1,790 words, approx. 6 pages

Below, Hagedorn offers a positive review of The Moor's Last Sigh. I don't review books as a rule, but could not resist the opportunity to speak up for Salman Rushdie's astonishing... Read more

Critical Review by Michael Dirda

1,436 words, approx. 5 pages

In the following review, Dirda finds The Moor's Last Sigh further evidence of his contention that Rushdie is among the world's greatest writers. Over the past several years Salman Rushdi... Read more

Critical Review by Richard Eder

1,267 words, approx. 5 pages

Below, Eder presents a mixed review of The Moor's Last Sigh. Why is Moraes Zogoiby, disinherited scion of twin artistic and financial dynasties in Bombay, cowering in a graveyard across from Gr... Read more

Critical Review by Newsweek

782 words, approx. 3 pages

In the following review, the critic describes The Moor's Last Sigh as Rushdie's "passionate, often furious love letter to the country of his birth." There's an unusu... Read more

Critical Review by Gail Caldwell

1,330 words, approx. 5 pages

In the following review, Caldwell describes The Moor's Last Sigh as "a parable of modern India." In Salman Rushdie's vast, torrential ode to modern India, the streets are f... Read more

Critical Review by Norman Rush

1,555 words, approx. 6 pages

In the following review, Rush praises The Moor's Last Sigh as an apt response to the tyrannical reaction to The Satanic Verses. Salman Rushdie's new novel, his first since the infamous f... Read more

Critical Review by Paul Gray

866 words, approx. 3 pages

In the following review, Gray finds The Moor's Last Sigh's "leisurely wordiness is a mark of Rushdie's mastery." Near the end of The Moor's Last Sigh, a madma... Read more

Critical Essay by Paul Gray

277 words, approx. 1 pages

In the following essay, based on an interview with the author, Gray discusses the controversial nature of Rushdie's writing. "My last novel, to put it mildly, divided its readers,"... Read more

Critical Essay by Nina Barnton

1,511 words, approx. 6 pages

In the following essay, based on an interview with the author, Barnton describes Rushdie's life since the fatwa. London, Jan. 11—Having lunch with Salman Rushdie means being prepared for... Read more

Critical Review by Linton Weeks

1,010 words, approx. 4 pages

In the following review, discusses Rushdie's public promotion of The Moor's Last Sigh. Salman Rushdie was in town this week to promote his new novel, The Moor's Last Sigh, and pro... Read more

Critical Review by Michael Wood

3,033 words, approx. 11 pages

In the following review, Wood presents an in-depth analysis of Rushdie's career, culminating with The Moor's Last Sigh. The Moor's last sigh is several things, both inside and out... Read more

Critical Review by Alan Ryan

934 words, approx. 4 pages

In the following review, Ryan describes The Moor's Last Sigh as "an extraordinary act of the imagination." In 1989, Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses earned its aut... Read more

Interview by John Blades

943 words, approx. 4 pages

In the following interview, Blades queries Rushdie on religion and the effect of the Ayatollah Khomeini's death sentence on his writing. Name: Salman Rushdie Job: Subversive novelist Seven year... Read more

Critical Review by Phoebe-Lou Adams

250 words, approx. 1 pages

Below, Adams presents a positive review of The Moor's Last Sigh. Mr. Rushdie's new novel is so intricate, so multi-faceted, and so fast-moving that it keeps the reader dizzily enthralled... Read more

Critical Review by Merle Rubin

760 words, approx. 3 pages

In the following review, Rubin remarks that "the Moor's outlandish friends, family, and enemies may begin to look a little more familiar than we'd like" in The Moor'... Read more

Critical Review by Sara Maitland

1,089 words, approx. 4 pages

In the following review, Maitland suggests that The Moor's Last Sigh suffers from the fallout of the fatwa imposed upon its author. Salman Rushdie is—and I think this can be said fairly ... Read more

Critical Review by James Wood

2,873 words, approx. 10 pages

In the following review, Wood offers a mixed assessment of The Moor's Last Sigh. In 1835, Macaulay threw out one of those phrasal boomerangs that returns not to arm but to maim its sender: �... Read more

Critical Review by J. M. Coetzee

3,840 words, approx. 13 pages

In the following review, Coetzee presents a deep analysis of The Moor's Last Sigh, noting its multilayered construction. 1. The Moor's Last Sigh is a novel about modern India. Its hero i... Read more

Critical Review by Nancy Wigston

355 words, approx. 2 pages

Below, Wigston offers a positive review of the audio version of The Moor's Last Sigh. Actor Art Malik read The Moor's Last Sigh, Rushdie's latest tour de force, in what is a near-... Read more

Critical Review by Orhan Pamuk

2,341 words, approx. 8 pages

In the following review, Pamuk considers Rushdie's treatment of his homeland in his fiction, most recently in The Moor's Last Sigh. Peppered with politics and betrayal, sugared with art ... Read more

Critical Review by Publishers Weekly

522 words, approx. 2 pages

Below, the critic offers a positive assessment of The Moor's Last Sigh. Not since Midnight's Children has Rushdie produced such a dazzling novel. Nor has he curbed his urgent indignation... Read more

Critical Review by John Bemrose

797 words, approx. 3 pages

In the following negative review of The Moor's Last Sigh, Bemrose remarks that "most of the novel reads like the vision of a harried mind that has lost touch with the pace and amplitude ... Read more

Critical Review by Brad Hooper

245 words, approx. 1 pages

In the following review, Hooper describes The Moor's Last Sigh as "a marvelously wrought novel, guaranteed to entrance." Rushdie's first novel since the fateful Satanic Ver... Read more

Critical Essay by John F. Burns

966 words, approx. 4 pages

In the following essay, Burns describes reaction in India to The Moor's Last Sigh. For Anuj Malhotra, a bookseller in this capital's affluent Khan Market district, the publication here t... Read more

Critical Review by Michiko Kakutani

1,182 words, approx. 4 pages

In the following review, Kakutani describes the ways in which the story and characters of The Moor's Last Sigh relate the author's own views of his native country. In Salman Rushdie�... Read more

Critical Review by James Bowman

1,072 words, approx. 4 pages

In the following mixed review, Bowman asserts that The Moor's Last Sigh reads as if the author wrote it simply to prove that he could, and predicts that the book will offend Hindus as The Satan... Read more

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