Salman Rushdie has adapted Haroun and the Sea of Stories into an opera playing at Manhattan’s Lincoln Center from Oct. 31 to Nov. 11. Haroun is a fabulist children’s tale, more accessible than his usual work, but still layered with allegory:
Haroun narrates the fate of the story-teller, who loses his ability to tell tales. His son then sets out on a journey to save his father’s skills. Rushdie had intended the book as a gift to his son Zafar… to make the son understand his father’s plight… [T]he book reached out to audiences uncomfortable with the complexities of Rushdie’s other novels…
Rushdie found the process of adaptation taxing:
S.R. ItÂ’s a strange book, Haroun. This was the one that came with the greatest fluency—it took me less than a year, and itÂ’s now taken ten times that long to adapt, so you know this is a much larger achievement… C.W. ThereÂ’s a practical reason for that. Its brevity makes it a little bit more manageable. I mean, I have my eye on The MoorÂ’s Last Sigh… S.R. Yes, that would be a very long opera.
Rushdie’s last stage adaptation was the excellent, albeit rushed, Midnight’s Children in London and at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He’s also working on a film version of his short story The Firebird’s Nest, in which he’s cast his inamorata Padma Lakshmi.
Update: Amardeep Singh has more.
hmm.. I think I read Rushdie’s haroun and sea of stories some eight to ten years back..the father loosing his power to tell stories after his wife disappears.. I thought it was just ok..not one of the great works of Rushdie’s..resembling arabian nights stories…a lil childish and alice in the wonderland kind of stories if I remember them right..it did not feel unique at all when I read it and did not carry much of Rushdie’s unique writing style either.. I liked his midnights children, moors last sigh and his last novel ground beneath the feet..all three were unique and carry Rushdie’s unique style of writing, his wild creative imagination and weird sense of humor..though in ground beneath her feet you could sense more maturity, feel his middle age philosophy showing here in there..