Video Games-Are-Art Lobby Gains New Supporter: Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie, famed author of the Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children, has just published his second children’s novel, Luka and the Fire of Life.  What major metaphor does he use to frame the magical world that his young protagonist must travel through to save his father’s life?

Computer games — though [Rushdie] admitted that he was terrible at the games and his sons usually beat him.

“Video games are often based on a classical quest format. That fits well with a fable,” he told the AP. “The book is about the value of life, and in video games you can have a thousand lives. So I contrasted those two things.”

Luka must recover the Fire of Life to wake his father, a master storyteller, from a mysterious sleep.  He is accompanied on the journey by holographic copy of his father who wants to kill the man he was based on.  So… that’s actually par for the somewhat unsettling course for a Rushdie novel.

So, to anyone out there who wants to argue that video games aren’t art, you should know that you will be arguing against Salman Rushdie.  The dude survived a death sentence from Ayatollah Khomeini.  You don’t mess.

(via Kotaku.)