The Moor's Last Sigh

Moraes 'Moor' Zogoiby narrates the fall of his family, the fabulously mixed da Gama-Zogoiby spice dynasty of Cochin, from the pepper warehouses and the old Jewish quarter of Mattancherry to the art and gangland of Bombay, and at last to an exile in Andalusia that rhymes with the fall of Moorish Granada. Rushdie roots the saga in a real south India: the spice trade of Cochin, the Paradesi synagogue, the harbour of Vasco da Gama's landfall, and the far cities to which the family's ruin carries the Moor.

Abraham

The spice house

The dynasty

In the pepper warehouses of Cochin the da Gama-Zogoiby dynasty amasses its spice fortune, and the family's tangled loves and feuds begin. Rushdie opens amid the sacks of cardamom and the ledgers of the trade that first drew the world to this coast, the ground from which his sprawling family epic grows.

The Cochin chapters

explicit The da Gama-Zogoiby fortune is built on the pepper and spice trade of Cochin, the real port of Kerala; the family warehouses are sited in the old spice quarter of the city.

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