Grimus

Blurb

Grimus is a 1975 fantasy and science fiction novel by Salman Rushdie. It was his literary debut.
The story loosely follows Flapping Eagle, a young Indian who receives the gift of immortality after drinking a magic fluid. After drinking the fluid, Flapping Eagle wanders the earth for 777 years 7 months and 7 days, searching for his immortal sister and exploring identities before falling through a hole in the Mediterranean Sea. He arrives in a parallel dimension at the mystical Calf Island where those immortals who have tired of the world but are reluctant to give up their immortality exist in a static community under a subtle and sinister authority.
Published in 1975, Grimus was Salman Rushdie's first published novel. To a large extent it has been disparaged by academic critics; though Peter Kemp's comment is particularly vitriolic, it does give an idea of the novel's initial reception:
"His first novel, Grimus, a ramshackle surreal saga based on a 12th-century Sufi poem and copiously encrusted with mythic and literary allusion, nosedived into oblivion amid almost universal critical derision."