The Moor's Last Sigh

The Moor's Last Sigh is a novel by the British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie, published in 1995 and his fifth.

The book is set in Bombay and Cochin and narrated by Moraes Zogoiby, known as the Moor, who belongs to a family whose wealth comes from the spice trade and whose history runs alongside the modern history of India. He tells the story of that family in a rush of anecdote, covering premature deaths, family quarrels, thwarted loves, secrets and greed, and the reader is carried along by a narrator who is enjoying his own digressions. The title comes from the story of Boabdil, the last Moorish king of Granada, whose sigh as he looked back at the city he had surrendered gives the book its name, and the novel draws on real events of the period, including the demolition of the Babri Masjid and the Bombay bombings of 1993.

It is his fifth novel, published after Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses, and it is set in the two Indian cities where much of his family history lies.