To a large extent it has been disparaged by academic critics; though Peter Kemp's comment is particularly vitriolic, it does give an idea of the novel's initial reception:[1] Amongst other influences, Rushdie incorporates Sufi, Hindu, Christian and Norse mythologies alongside pre- and post-modernist literature into his construction of character and narrative form.

It can be seen as growing out of and extending the techniques and the literary traditions identified with Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, or Sir Thomas More's Utopia, in that its journey traverses both outer and inner dimensions, exploring both cultural ideologies and the ambivalent effects that they have on one's psychological being.

This profoundly post-structuralist approach gains overt expression, for example, in Virgil's comment on the limitations of aesthetic theories that attempt to suppress their own contingencies: "Any intellect which confines itself to mere structuralism is bound to rest trapped in its own webs.

[4] Hence, like Gabriel García Márquez, Grimus incorporates magic realism to transgress distinctions of genres, which mirrors "the state of confusion and alienation that defines postcolonial societies and individuals".

The footnote in Virgil's diaries "explains" the use of "K" rather than "Q", which both overtly draws attention to the narrative as a construction, the effects of which are discussed above, and in a quite dark irony prefigures the "Rushdie Affair" when it states that "A purist would not forgive me, but there it is."

Hence, Flapping Eagle's realisation that "[He] was climbing a mountain into the depths of an inferno plunging deep into myself" and his mistaking of Virgil Jones for "a demon" manifest as part of "some infernal torture" [Grimus p. 69].

The basing of Calf Island on a merger of Eastern and Western references (i.e. Dante's Mount Purgatory and Attar's Qâf Mountain) is emblematic of Rushdie's locating of post-colonial identity in an eclectic coalescence of cultures.