I’d only read one Salman Rushdie novel prior to this month, tackling Midnight’s Children back in 2010; I found it a somewhat difficult read, but brimming with imagination, big themes, and incredible prose and wordplay. What I didn’t know until very recently was that he wrote a children’s novel called Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which appeared on the Guardian‘s list of the 100 greatest novels ever written. It’s quite wonderful, featuring more of the wordplay and creativity that marked Midnight’s Children, reminding me in many ways of The Phantom Tollbooth, one of the best children’s novels I’ve ever read (twice, in fact, once on my own and again to my daughter), and the works of Roald Dahl.

Haroun Khalifa is the young son of Rashid, a storyteller who suddenly loses his gift of narration when his wife leaves him, leaving the two of them without any means of support and Rashid without his identity. When Rashid fails to deliver at a speaking engagement, he and Haroun are whisked off to the Valley of K for his next assignment, speaking for the politician Snooty Buttoo – there are a lot of Butts in this book – only for Haroun to discover that his father has lost his ability to weave stories because Iff the Water Genie is trying to sever Rashid’s imagination. This leads Haroun to learn about the Sea of Stories, the plot by the evil Khattam-Shud to poison it and block its source, and the impending war between the Kingdoms of Chup and Gup that will determine the fate of the Sea.

Rushdie makes Haroun the hero of his own story in the tradition of children in literature who have to do something to save one or both of their parents. Haroun faces difficult choices and shows courage in the face of great odds, standing up to the various otherworldly creatures trying to steal his father’s gift or kill Haroun’s new friends from Gup or sew the lips of the Princess Batcheat shut. (He gets no help from the vacuous Prince Bolo, the antithesis of the typical prince-hero character, generally saying and doing the wrong thing or just showing no awareness of what’s happening around him.)

The text itself is replete with puns, references to Hindustani words or Indian historical figures, and even pop culture references. Iff and the Butts work for the Walrus, who employs technicians named the Eggheads, a reference I trust I don’t have to explain. Butt the Hoopoe certainly sounds like a nod to the British glam-rockers Mott the Hoople. Many names allude to characters in the stories of One Thousand and One Nights, including Haroun al-Rashid, a real-life Caliph of Baghdad who appears in many of those tales. General Kitab’s name means “book” in Arabic and Hindustani, and his army comprises numerous Pages. And the fish with multiple mouths, or maws, are referred to as Plentimaws … and there are Plentimaw fish in the Sea. (The book also has a brief appendix where Rushdie explains many of the character and place names.)

It’s also hard to avoid the likelihood that Rushdie wrote this as a reaction to the fatwa issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran after the publication of Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses and the general controversy over a portion of the book that some Muslims deemed blasphemous. In the wake of its release, at least ten countries banned the book in some form, including his native India, while many U.S. bookstores declined to sell it. There were also multiple bombings of bookstores and newspapers in the U.S. and in the United Kingdom related to the book’s sale, while the Archbishop of Canterbury called for an expansion of England’s Blasphemy Act to cover offenses against Islam. (That law was repealed entirely in 2008.) Haroun may be just a children’s novel, but it’s probably also a parable about censorship and the threat to the marketplace of ideas, showing how a society might suffer in a world without stories.

Haroun is better for slightly older kids, because the vocabulary would likely be too demanding for children below fifth grade or so, although the story itself would mostly be appropriate – Haroun’s mother runs off with another man near the beginning, but eventually returns without any real comment – and easy for any child to follow. I could see younger kids being disturbed by the threats to sew the Princess’ mouth shut, although Rushdie softens that possibility by having other characters complain about how awful her singing voice is. It’s a book for younger readers, though, so Haroun saves the day, no mouths are sewn shut, and Rashid eventually regains his talent for weaving stories. The beauty of this book is the journey, the literal one Haroun takes to this other world – I haven’t even mentioned the earth’s second moon, Kahani, which you might not have noticed because it moves by a Process Too Complicated to Explain – and the one on which Rushdie takes the reader, with puns and gags flying so fast that you might miss them on your first read. It’s a delight and a testament to Rushdie’s boundless imagination.

Next up: I’m many books behind in my reviews, but right now I’m reading Kat Kinsman’s memoir Hi, Anxiety: Life with a Bad Case of Nerves.