The Ground Beneath Her Feet (henceforward GBF), Salman Rushdie’s sixth novel, was published in 1999. At that time Rushdie was just beginning to resume a “normal” life after what he calls “The Plague Years”, a decade during which Khomeini’s fatwa forced him to live in hiding, under constant police protection. One year later he would settle in the USA, where he still resides. Though GBF is not as widely studied as earlier novels by Rushdie, it is nevertheless one of his major work.
With its 575 pages, it is the longest novel Rushdie has written so far; it features a single narrator, called Umeed Merchant, and nicknamed Rai, born in 1947, who tells his story from a point located in time (the 1…
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Citation: Pesso-Miquel, Catherine. "The Ground Beneath Her Feet". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 April 2016 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=682, accessed 24 April 2024.]
