
Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (or, if you prefer, 1001 nights) is the length of time that the Strangeness lasts. The walls between the worlds come tumbling down and the Jinni return to our world to cause mayhem and havoc. But before all this, before the cracks were sealed, Dunia, a Jinni princess, came to our world and fell in love with a mortal man, for his mind. Together they had many, many children before she returned to her world, and now, in its time of need, she must reconvene her descendants to help save the world. This unlikely group includes a gardener, still mourning his dead wife who wakes up one day to find himself levitating; a failing graphic novelist whose creation appears to him in his bedroom; and a baby who can detect corruption with her mere presence.
Even after a few days of ruminating, I’m still not entirely sure about this book. Rushdie’s grasp of language and myth is as strong as ever and this book has a very mythic feel to it (as, I imagine, it’s supposed to) but I was never able to just settle down and get lost in it, as I have done in other Rushdie books. The characters are mostly sketches, with really only Dunia and Mr Geronimo, the gardener, getting much filling in.
So, without being able to entirely say why, a difficult book to love, but definitely one to enjoy and find something worthwhile in.