"When I was growing up," Rushdie told an interviewer who asked about his facility with words, "everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, maybe India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language." This language play is one of the most compelling parts of Rushdie's writing, so much so that he tends to follow a kind of linguistic logic beyond the requirements of either plot or character, but these verbal digressions or extensions often have their own appeal. In The Moor's Last Sigh, since the narrative is a continuing expression of the protagonist's thoughts and emotional responses, nothing is ultimately irrelevant to an understanding of Moraes. In addition, one of the peculiarities of Moraes's character is the interesting conceit that he is living at a...