Rushdie's narrator, the gloriously-named Moraes Zogoiby, gives us his family's history over four generations with a generous rush of detailing that will recall your first encounter with a crowded Mumbai street.
It remains to be seen whether future generations of Parisians will remember the ghosts of La Santé.
According to a story passed down for generations, a Dane was caught hiding in the cathedral after a raid and, as retribution for the destruction wrought by his countrymen, was flayed alive.
However, he would regret it if the church lost its "credibility" among non-attenders who, he says, frequently feel warmly disposed to it "thanks to generations of love and service".
For as long as its trumpets deliver their annual fanfare of colour among the headstones of past generations of parishioners, they will give its creator a special kind of immortality.
Blacklips's Monday night residency at the Pyramid Club between 1992 and 1995 drew previous generations of artists together, including Pfahler, Arias and Atlas.
In Spain's case, our adherence to what was then the European Community was the culmination of a yearning by successive generations cut off from the possibility of joining the broader current of peace, democracy and progress that was flowing north of the Pyrenean border.
"I want to see changes here with us Aboriginal women, to have that voice to speak not only for ourselves but men and women and the younger generations," she says.
Her first novel, Mornings in Jenin, a bestseller in 2010, was a raw and emotional account of four generations of one Palestinian family.
A Shiregreen native (generations of his family frequented the working men's club), Rhodes sees strength in this "fingers in lots of pies" approach.
Mick Tighe, a mountain guide who lives near Roy Bridge, outside Fort William, and who knew Kennedy, said: "I wonder how many MPs are born and bred in their constituencies, whose families go back generations in that constituency and still continued living in it".
