SOURCE: Blishen, Edward. “A Pudding of Puns.” New Statesman and Society 3, no. 120 (28 September 1990): 32.

In the following review, Blishen reads Haroun and the Sea of Stories as an allegory for Rushdie's life.

It really isn't possible (I've tried) to read or judge this book [Haroun and the Sea of Stories] without regard—not in detail, but in general—to its author's plight. It is dedicated to his son, Zafar. The acrostic in which the dedication is cast ends with the lines: “As I wander far from view / Read, and bring me home to you.”

The exuberantly magical tale is of a professional storyteller, Rashid, known as the Shah of Blah, who lives in the sad city of Alfibay, and loses his wife (“What are these stories? Life is not a storybook or a joke shop. All this fun will come to no good”): she runs away with a miserable...