In The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, John Clute writes an entry devoted exclusively to the idea of an Ocean of Story.

While the Chups are represented as bureaucratic functionaries interested in utility instead of fables, the Gups are defenders of the Sea. The Sea of Stories is a representation of intertextuality and the war between Gups and Chups is a battle over that initial question: “What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” (22). He must help the kingdom rescue the princess Batcheat from the dark side of the planet, where the Chupwalas are poisoning the Streams of Story. There he travels the Sea of Stories to Gup City, capital of a kingdom of story-loving blabbermouths on Kahani who are at war against the Chupwalas, or “quiet fellows” (215), led by Khattam-Shud. Haroun flies to Kahani, an invisible moon that shadows the visible one. On the way, Haroun meets an array of quirky characters who become his allies, including Iff the water genie and Butt the hoopoe bird (who don’t tolerate Ifs or Buts!). So begins Haroun’s great quest to restore his father’s gift for storytelling, a journey that will take him all the way to the Sea of Stories, which is being poisoned by a dark lord named Khattam-Shud, “the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of Language itself” (79).

The young protagonist of Salman Rushdie’s children’s fantasy novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories asks his father Rashid Khalifa, a great storyteller better known as the Shah of Blah, or the Ocean of Notions, “ What’s the use of stories that aren’t even true?” (22) Upon being asked this question Rashid falls silent and finds “he had run out of stories to tell” (22).

OL457172W Page_number_confidence 89.47 Pages 230 Partner Innodata Pdf_module_version 0.0.16 Ppi 360 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20211030062240 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 551 Scandate 20211029042940 Scanner Scanningcenter cebu Scribe3_search_catalog isbn Scribe3_search_id 9780140140439 Tts_version 4.The following is an excerpt from the presentation I made earlier this week for my seminar on (Post)Colonial Geographies with Professor Sandeep Banerjee at McGill University.

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Salman rushdie sea of stories