Haroun and the Sea of Stories is an opera in two acts by American composer Charles Wuorinen, based on the children's novel of the same name by Salman Rushdie, with a libretto by James Fenton.

[1] Salman Rushdie wrote Haroun and the Sea of Stories as a short novel for his son Zafar, then aged eleven.

[2][3] Charles Wuorinen was attracted by both the plot, and the circumstances of the story's writing, admiring the absence of self-pity.

Charles Michener of The Observer noted that reading the libretto was enjoyable, but found the music too "earthbound", although with adequate clean and forceful lines for the singers.

[7] Peter G. Davis wrote in New York magazine:But the score for Haroun will dazzle any receptive ear with its incredibly broad palate of finely tuned sounds and its irrepressible vitality—a singularly apt musical response to a sophisticated children’s novel that has very adult things to say about a free imagination trapped in a world of oppressive thought control.