Riding A Jaguar

The tentative approach that Rushdie makes towards Nicaragua is noteworthy. ‘Hope: A Prologue’ can be read as a series of justifications—the degree of the writer’s familiarity with the country is limited to a chance proximity of resi¬dence with Hope Somoza; his interest in the country boils down to a chance synchronicity of dates— the indepen-dence day of Nicaragua and his son’s birthday; his point of view, he admits apologetically is one of an offspring of the third world—not quite that simplis¬tic yet almost so. To add to the list the reader has to grapple with the flat state¬ment that the writer of what promises to be a violently controversial book has stayed in the country for precisely three weeks. Moreover, he had not gone to the country with the intention of writing a book at all.