Shalimar the Clown: A Novel | Salman Rushdie | Beautiful tale, wonderful prose

Shalimar the Clown: A Novel | Salman Rushdie | No Clown

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Shalimar the Clown...

	Shalimar the Clown: A Novel Salman Rushdie Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 65 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

?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

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.

?A commanding story . . . [a] harrowing climax . . . Revenge is an ancient and powerful engine of narrative.?
?The New York Times Book Review

?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

?A vast, richly peopled, beautiful and deeply rageful book that serves as a profound and disturbing artifact of our times.?
?San Francisco Chronicle

?Marvelous . . . brilliant . . . a story worthy of [Rushdie?s] genius.?
?Detroit Free Press

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
? The Washington Post Book World ?Los Angeles Times Book Review ?St. Louis Post-Dispatch ?Rocky Mountain News

ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR
?Time ?Chicago Tribune ?The Christian Science Monitor

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Beautiful tale, wonderful prose

This is a beautiful tale about a family from Kashmir. The father is an ambassador with a modern-minded daughter in the U.S. Their earlier life in Kashmir follows them to the U.S. As usual for Rushdie, this novel is filled with wonderful prose along with touches of magical realism.

No Clown

As it turned out, Shalimar was anything but a clown. True, as a young man he was well known for his antics on the high wire that were so funny that they made everyone forget just how dangerous they were. But when he and fellow Kashmiri Boonyi Kaul were just fourteen years old, they fell in love and Shalimar's life was changed forever. The two married soon after and settled into a life in rural Kashmir that included working together as regional entertainers.

All went well until Boonyi, a talented dancer, made the first of two fateful decisions. She decided to make the most of her dance talents by moving to India without Shalimar in order perform on a bigger stage. There she caught the eye of American ambassador Max Ophuls and made her second decision, one that would ultimately change Shalimar from clown to assassin. She decided to become the ambassador's mistress.

Shalimar the Clown begins and ends with the assassination of Max Ophuls. At the time of his death, Ophuls is an old man living in Los Angeles near his beautiful daughter, India, and his government career has included a stint as U.S. counter-terrorism chief. His brutal murder, in the style favored by Islamist terrorists, at first leads authorities to believe that he was targeted because of his roll in developing U.S. counter-terrorism policy. Little did they know that the assassination of Max Ophuls had been set in motion decades earlier.

This is complicated historical fiction covering the period during which Kashmir changed from a relatively peaceful place in which Muslims and Hindus successfully coexisted to the self-destructive region of the world it is today. Rushdie tells Kashmir's story through the eyes of those who lived through, but did not always survive, those violent years. He has written a political thriller filled with enough interesting side stories and flashbacks to put the tragedy of Kashmir into an understandable context for Western readers. That alone makes Shalimar the Clown a remarkable book. But what makes the book truly special is the way that Rushdie uses so many unforgettable characters to explain how, and why, the world has changed for the worst over the last two decades.

The audio version of Shalimar the Clown is read by Aasif Mandvi, a movie, television, and radio actor and successful writer and producer. Mandvi does such a wonderful job reading Rushdie's words that I have to wonder if I would have enjoyed reading the book nearly as much as I enjoyed listening to Mandvi breathe life into each of Rushdie's characters. He slips effortlessly from one accent to the other and uses tone and cadence in such a way that even the longest and most complex Rushdie sentences are clearly understood. As a reader, I would have had a difficult time, probably to the point of distraction, with some of the place and character names that are so integral to this story. Mandvi's reading made sure that did not happen, another reason that Shalimar the Clown is an excellent choice for fans of audio books.

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Extraordinary!

StC is a surpassing novel, transcendent. Rushdie ranks among the finest novelists ever. Some writers should be read. Others must be read. If you truly love fiction, you must read this novel. Enough said.

A good story, told with eloquence and passion.

Rushdie is an author whom I had mentally classified over the years as clever, but difficult to like, while feeling slightly guilty about not having read more of his work. I had read "Midnight's Children", been put off by the controversy over the "Satanic Verses" and by the reviews and subject matter of some of his other books (e.g. "The ground beneath her feet").

"Shalimar the Clown" completely changed this assessment. It is a book I never would have read, if I hadn't been prompted to by book group. A strong argument for being nudged to read out of one's comfort zone. I loved the book. For many reasons, but primarily because it's a great story, skillfully told. Rushdie is amazingly erudite, but manages to avoid the trap of coming across as a know-it-all. His passion about the situation in Kashmir gives vigor and fluency to the writing.

A strong 4-star recommendation, and - for me - a reason to consider exploring more of Rushdie's work

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Kashmir conflict, who done it and more

Max Ophuls is killed on his daughter's doorstep right after her birthday. His daughter, named India for where she was born, seems to have premonitions of this murder and is worried for her father. The story that then unfolds is an historical telling of intertwined lives that lead up to the murder.

When a "who done it" begins with the end of the story, the "who" is usually a mystery. When it is told, it usually has some interesting nuggets that emerge slowly. Not so in Shalimar the Clown. By page 40, the reader knows who committed the murder. Before page 80, the reader knows why. What the reader is left with is interesting and beautifully written, if bloated, prose. My favorite mysteries have an "AHA!" moment when all becomes clear. Few mysteries are that good, and this one isn't either.

Salman Rushdie comes from a background, where beautiful and lyrical language prevail. I do not happen to care for such embellishments and I felt the book could have been shortened by 100 pages or so. However, I did love reading about the Kashmiri culture and the intermix of Hindu and Muslim cultures on the cusp of Pakistani independence. The story of Kashmir is fascinating and devastating. Hindu and Muslim cultures, which had co-existed prior to the division of India and Pakistan, come to the fore and have a great impact on the killer's mind.

A great history is written, beginning with World War II, under the guise of Max meeting his wife, the Grey Rat, both of whom play significant roles in WWII. While interesting to give background to Max, it was told is such detail that I wasn't sure where the book was going. Max's married life is not all that his wife would hope and Max has affair after affair. When his daughter India is born, great catastrophies are set in motion for all characters. The rest of the book describes the intertwined lives, their histories and oft-times goes back and forth in time. I would call it a great mess of a book, except that it is very readable and enjoyable.

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