Shalimar the Clown: A Novel by Salman Rushdie (EPUB)

Description

“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

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Shalimar the clown is basically a story of two villages in disputed Indian Kashmir, one Hindu and one Muslim, and the lives of their people as first pastoral happiness, then bitter civil war, then terrorism and eye-for-an-eye retribution and bitter revenge devastate life as it was known. In the center is a young couple, Boonyi and Shalimar, who fall in love; and the breaking of their bond and life together is mirrored by the complete breakdown of all that is decent and good around them.The book starts slow, and Rushdie’s writing style, while perhaps well chosen for the locations and people he is here portraying – definitely otherworldly and a deft mixing of narrative and legend – unfortunately does not help it take off. Characters are introduced which may well be colorful but which may be hard to relate to; there is a lot on village history, kings and princes and times and events of long ago which do not seem to add significantly to the progression of the story.And then things pick up. One selfish act takes place – and everything changes. We are reintroduced to the world: names are discarded, changed, picked anew, fresh with meaning; identities, titles and roles are altered; all that was stable is now unstable, fact and legend are now intertwined, the known world is violated, dishonored, destroyed, set ablaze and a newer and much much uglier one takes its place. Nobody is who they were, all names are lies, honor and personal values are reduced to murder, not only for Shalimar, but for old Misri, for the General, ultimately even for Kashmira. “No more mister nice guy,” says the commander of Abu Sayyaf late in the book, and he means it. The gloves are off, no punches are pulled; the story relentlessly becomes more serious and violent. It’s not pretty.The characters are all richly imagined, expertly drawn, and each evolves, impacted by the world around them – and therefore typically for the worse. Especially the degeneration of Shalimar from a seemingly innocent and dumb but loveable man-boy to a driven homocidal maniac is superbly executed; no doubt Rushdie has had quite some time to work on putting such a character on the page. Rushdie can write with humor, sarcasm, sensitivity and sometimes very movingly; his occasional lapses into technique trickery can therefore leave one a little annoyed. But Rushdie is a writer of exceptional talent, just sometimes a little unevenly applied.It is a tragic, tragic tale – all the more important that people should also realize that it may as well be the truth.

⭐The book could otherwise be called Noman Sher Noman, which is the name Shalimar the Clown went to court with for the murder of his wife’s illegitimate daughter’s father, Max Ophuls. The names are confusing, especially when adding that India, who opens the book in Chapter 1, is Kashmira, who closes the book poised to shoot at the crazed killer breaking in at night through security. Shalimar the Clown’s wife’s name is something I would have to look up to spell. Kachhwa Karnail’s name is marked on page 95, because of Salman Rushdie’s use of ad agency writing skills: “which is to say ’Colonel Turtle’ or ‘Tortoise’. So Tortoise Colonel he became, and was forced to look for his metaphors of self-description closer to the ground. ‘Slow and steady wins the race, eh, what?’ he practiced; and ‘Tortoise by name, damned hard-shelled by nature’.” This echoes the John Kleese ad about invisible tape being seen to be less visible than more visible tape, and shows Joseph Heller influence as well. So now I know Rushdie well enough to dissect his influences. The book starts in Los Angeles because he lived in Los Angeles with his most recent wife. That is the thin tie to the Rodney King riots and dropped the name “Orenthal James Simpson”. And the night vision goggles and all the police protection at the end is simply the author’s use of his experiences in police protection. I cannot speculate about the use of the Russian landlady. The novel started slowly. The war between India and Pakistan begins on page 127 and lasts for 25 days. The Gegroo brothers, another name that is hard to digest geographically, and Zoon Misri, a woman raped on her way to flower picking, get lost in too much sub-plotting. I will call it sub-plotting because the linear qualities of the overall plot are not clear until later. The “Max” chapter gets my interest up more than any other and allows me to have more interest for the remainder of the novel. Ophuls is in France in World War II being groomed for counter-terrorism and ambassadorship. Rushdie’s fast-paced turns can still be obscure from sentence to sentence and he relies on incomplete love stories again, too much, but the setting makes a connection that India versus Kashmir in the 1960s, fought by unpronounceable names, cannot. I marked page 160 for references to Night Flight and Flight to Arras. When I was reading Joseph Anton, I could not help but ask, “Where is all the money coming from?” Rushdie is Indian in roots only. This novel Shalimar the Clown isn’t an eastern novel because Rushdie’s life is western. But it has roots in the Indian subcontinent because if he is successfully read there, that is where all the money can come from. This is not opportunism. But I feel a little disappointed in myself in thinking that a billion readers are written to in this novel mostly because they are a billion. The multi-cultural qualities are not as strong here as with The Satanic Verses.

⭐Pros: I only paid 99 cents for this bookThe Book more or less provides a balanced view of Kashmir politicsCons: The story line is interesting but could not have been narrated more poorlythe last thing you need is history lessons from Salman Rushdie who jumps between Kashmir and Nazi Era, boring irrelevant details you may wish to skip throughthe Ambassador who is a scumbag is ultimately painted as a hero this book does not reflect a writer who is so highly rated in literary circles

⭐This is a story of tribal culture in Kashmir where honor holds above all virtues. Rushdie has an infuriating but effective way of creating interest and tension by divulging information in advance and you’d have to go through a lot of pages to finally get the details . His narration has casual storytelling style to it that engages the senses.There are so many well researched areas of true events of world history, sometimes it’s plain plodding on, there was even a lengthy discourse on the rise of Abu Sayyaf in our country’s Muslim territory.The thing that brought much interest is the description of Kashmir as a place like heaven in a hell of political strifes and discord among its tribes and people of different religions; the characters simply lift out of the pages and inhabit such places in your mind you wouldn’t think exist.For me, Salman Rushdie is Shalimar the Clown from whose mother he got his lazy eye.

⭐Whilst set against a complex political past, this is as much a story of love and betrayal as it is a story of war and conflict. An interesting read with exquisitely drawn characters. The most compelling moments are those set in the beautiful Kashmiri past. The characters there are far more finely drawn and intriguing than the main character of Max Ophuls or India/Kashmira, despite the large amount of the novel dedicated to them. As fine as Midnight’s Children? No. Better than a lot of novels? Yes.

⭐After a period of time writing books which showcased his superb written skills but were about not much in particular (Fury, The Ground Beneath Her Feet), Rushdie returned to form with Shalimar the Clown. This in particular focuses on the destruction of a tolerant Kashmir under the feet of Islamic insurgency and Indian repression. More generally it treats of the drift towards ethnic partisanship. There are lots of events including a thrilling finale. And his writing is still superb.

⭐I quickly fell in love with Shalimar the Clown and lived every step of his journey alongside him. This feels like so many stories in one story, each character is unique and the backdrop of Kashmir is perfect…loved this book!

⭐What more can you say? Great book, well structured. Exciting, he is always worth a read.

⭐It’s a great read but I wasn’t so sure about how it ended.

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