Haroun and the Sea of Stories

• Genre: Fiction; young adult magical realism
• Originally Published: 1990
• Reading Level/Interest: Lexile 940L; grades 8-12
• Structure/Length: 12 chapters; approx. 216 pages; approx. 4 hours, 46 minutes on audio
• Protagonist and Central Conflict: Young Haroun lives with his parents until his mother leaves and his father loses his gift for storytelling. To restore the wellspring of all stories, Haroun travels with a water genie named Iff to a moon that is controlled by a dictatorial ruler who suppresses free speech.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues: Threats of violence, war, absence of a parent

Salman Rushdie, Author

• Bio: Born in 1947 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India; grew up in India and England; earned his BA in history from King’s College, Cambridge; worked as an advertising copywriter before becoming a full-time writer; was targeted in 1989 by the Iranian government with a fatwa (legal ruling) ordering his execution for his allegedly blasphemous novel The Satanic Verses (1988); was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature; has received many literary awards, including the Booker Prize (1981), the James Joyce Award (2008), the Golden PEN Award (2011), and the PEN/Pinter Prize (2014); Haroun and the Sea of Stories has been adapted as both a play and an opera.
• Other Works: Midnight’s Children (1981); Shame (1983); The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995); Shalimar the Clown (2005); Luka and the Fire of Life (2010); Quichotte (2019); Victory City (2023)
• Awards: Writers Guild Children’s Book Award (1991)

CENTRAL THEMES connected and noted throughout this Teaching Unit:

• Freedom of Speech as the Greatest Power of All
• The Importance of Stories
• Linguistic Playfulness and the Slippery Nature of Language

STUDY OBJECTIVES: In accomplishing the components of this Unit, students will:

• Explore background information on metafiction and magical realism to increase their engagement with and understanding of Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
• Read/study paired texts and other brief resources to deepen their understanding of themes related to Freedom of Speech as the Greatest Power of All, The Importance of Stories, and Linguistic Playfulness and the Slippery Nature of Language.
• Demonstrate their understanding of the theme of The Importance of Stories by creating a chart linking quotes from the novel to evidence from research into other novels that changed people’s thinking.
• Analyze the significance of various elements of the novel, such as allusion, irony, satire, symbolism, characterization, motif, and setting, and construct essay responses tying these to the novel’s meaning.