The aims of The Royal Collection Trust are the care and conservation of the Royal Collection, and the promotion of access and enjoyment through exhibitions, publications, loans and educational activities. every vestige of individuality ultimately vanishes in The Conference of the Birds, the surrender of the protagonist’s selfhood is never complete in Grimus. He spends the next 777 years, 7 months and 7 days exploring the earth, until he falls through a hole in the Mediterranean Sea, which takes him to a parallel dimension where immortals have decided to spend the rest of eternity. If the transparent topography of the island – whose only item of topographical importance is Calf Mountain – unveils a yearning for evasion and a reversal of man’s Fall, Rushdie strips the island of its potential for plenitude. The reader’s first view of the title-figure is deliberately unimpressive ─ he is knitting ─ and Grimus does not rise to any kind of exceptional stature: “Remember this: he’s only a man,” (192) Virgil Jones tells the disheartened Flapping Eagle.

It is interesting only because Rushdie plays around with the magical realism that will play a major part in his writing and touches on themes he will later explore in much greater depth. Flapping Eagle is an outcast Indian weary of the immortality bestowed on him 700 years ago by an elixir.

The income from your ticket contributes directly to The Royal Collection Trust, a registered charity. Whether skier or snowboarder, beginner or expert, the Grimus Ski Centre has the right equipment for your needs. Through paronomasia, Rushdie immediately inscribes Grimus in the literary tradition of parody – defined by Linda Hutcheon (who is clearly averse to giving any transhistorical definition of parody and restricting its range of intent) 10 as “a modern recoding which establishes difference at the heart of similarity” (Hutcheon 8) – thus marking the beginning of a polyphonic conception of literature. It is Virgil who engages Rushdie’s sympathies so much that the author, probably unconsciously, pushes to one side the thematic development of Flapping Eagle in favour of the character who most suits the SF genre.

In this respect, it is significant that the author should have chosen “Grimus” over other possible permutations of letters (Urgims, Rumgis, Srigum.

Naturally, such a statement foreshadows the very end of the novel, in which Calf Mountain dissolves as Flapping Eagle and Media make love. While this is a typical theme in SF literature (humanity travelling to distant suns, and making their home on other planets), it is also a major theme in Salman Rushdie literature. That the ego remains a barrier is made clear by Flapping Eagle’s statement after the process of unification with Grimus has taken place: “There is still an I. They told him not to sacrifice himself so foolishly and for such an impossible aim, but he […] told them that since his heart was given to the flame forever, nothing else mattered” (131). This world is inhabited by other potion-drinking immortals, and is presided over by the strange and powerful Grimus – a doppelganger of Flapping Eagle.