LoveReading Says
Shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award. Another impeccably crafted work, well up to standard although after 350 pages I had moments wishing for simple language. The big message is anger at the efforts of the Indian army to take over Kashmir with much killing and atrocities which spills over, through our central character, into America. It’s a challenging read.
Comparison: Michael Ondaatje, Amit Chaudhuri, David Grossman.
Similar this month: J M Coetzee, A L Kennedy.
Sarah Broadhurst
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Shalimar the Clown Synopsis
"Dazzling . . . Modern thriller, Ramayan epic, courtroom drama, slapstick comedy, wartime adventure, political satire, village legend-they're all blended here magnificently."-The Washington Post Book World
"Absorbing . . . Everywhere [Rushdie] takes us there is both love and war, in strange and terrifying combinations, painted in swaying, swirling, world-eating prose that annihilates the borders between East and West, love and hate, private lives and the history they make."-Time
This is the story of Maximilian Ophuls, America' s counterterrorism chief, one of the makers of the modern world; his Kashmiri Muslim driver and subsequent killer, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the clown; Max's illegitimate daughter India; and a woman who links them, whose revelation finally explains them all. It is an epic narrative that moves from California to Kashmir, France, and England, and back to California again. Along the way there are tales of princesses lured from their homes by demons, legends of kings forced to defend their kingdoms against evil. And there is always love, gained and lost, uncommonly beautiful and mortally dangerous.
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post Book World, Time, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Christian Science Monitor Rocky Mountain News
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780679783480 |
| Publication date: |
10th October 2006 |
| Author: |
Salman Rushdie |
| Publisher: |
Random House Trade Paperbacks an imprint of Random House Publishing Group |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
416 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
|
| Recommendations: |
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About Salman Rushdie
Sir Salman Rushdie was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) on 19 June 1947. He went to school in Bombay and at Rugby in England, and read History at King's College, Cambridge, where he joined the Cambridge Footlights theatre company. After graduating, he lived with his family who had moved to Pakistan in 1964, and worked briefly in television before returning to England, beginning work as a copywriter for an advertising agency. His first novel, Grimus, was published in 1975.
His second novel, the acclaimed Midnight's Children, was published in 1981. It won the Booker Prize for Fiction, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction), an Arts Council Writers' Award and the English-Speaking Union Award, and in 1993 was judged to have been the 'Booker of Bookers', the best novel to have won the Booker Prize for Fiction in the award's 25-year history.
Shalimar The Clown, the story of Max Ophuls, his killer and daughter, and a fourth character who links them all, was published in 2005. It was shortlisted for the 2005 Whitbread Novel Award.
In June 2007 he received a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
More About Salman Rushdie
