There Was This Storyteller . . .

By DAVID ELLIS/

Next month Salman Rushdie's first book since The Satanic Verses will reach U.S. bookstores. The initial printing (125,000 copies) is large for a children's book, which is what Haroun and the Sea of Stories at first appears to be. But hold on. The tale seems eerily parallel to Rushdie's predicament. There is a storyteller named Rashid Khalifa, also known as the Shah of Blah, who loses the gift of the gab and can no longer entertain. What's worse, his condition is mysteriously linked to a fanatic cult that wants to wipe out not only made-up tales but also human speech. Children may take all this as make- believe, but adult readers are free to perceive some veiled autobiography, plus a wistful prophecy: in the end, the good guys live happily ever after.

With reporting by Sidney Urquhart