Transcendent Imagination in Salman Rushdie’s Victory City: A confrontation of Myth, Religion, History and Tradition

ENG: The article focuses on Victory City (2023), the latest novel by Salman Rushdie, to discuss how transcendent reality is experienced and conceived in human life. The book explores the epistemological problems of religious tradition fictionalising the history of the Indian Vijayanagara Empire and proposing thus a new mythology. In his novel, framed as a fictional translation of an epic from Sanskrit, Rushdie confronts the real world through transcendent imagination to appeal to harmonious ideals and reconcile them with imperfect humanity. The author’s vision of that confrontation is interwoven with a biting critique of our world.