Preview of The Ground Beneath Her Feet Summary:

Rushdie has been described as the man who "redrew the literary map of India."

The enormous ambition required by a project of those dimensions is evident in the complex intermixture of themes in The Ground Beneath Her Feet. His vision of the human universe at the end of the twentieth century is one of chaos and instability verging on the edge of cataclysmic, even apocalyptic occurrences. Using the recent prevalence of major earthquakes as a sign of psychic disorder, Rushdie laces the narrative with literal, graphic descriptions of tremors rocking the deceptively placid surface plane upon which people unknowingly walk with confidence, leading toward a pervasive feeling of unease as the foundation structure of society is revealed as rotten and unstable.

Significantly, Rushdie has described his ordeal during the darkest days of the fatwa as "terribly bewildering. I had to find my feet again," and explains that after...