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- <text id=90TT2678>
- <title>
- Oct. 08, 1990: There Was This Storyteller. . .
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- Oct. 08, 1990 Do We Care About Our Kids?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- GRAPEVINE, Page 23
- There Was This Storyteller...</hdr>
- <body>
- <p>By DAVID ELLIS/Reported by Sidney Urquhart
- </p>
- <p> Next month Salman Rushdie's first book since The Satanic
- Verses will reach U.S. bookstores. The initial printing (125,000
- copies) is large for a children's book, which is what Haroun and
- the Sea of Stories at first appears to be. But hold on. The tale
- seems eerily parallel to Rushdie's predicament. There is a
- storyteller named Rashid Khalifa, also known as the Shah of
- Blah, who loses the gift of the gab and can no longer entertain.
- What's worse, his condition is mysteriously linked to a fanatic
- cult that wants to wipe out not only made-up tales but also
- human speech. Children may take all this as make-believe, but
- adult readers are free to perceive some veiled autobiography,
- plus a wistful prophecy: in the end, the good guys live happily
- ever after.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-