This book took me the longest time to read. 24 days! I've never had to spend so much time on a book in recent years. This is because the matter was heavy - lofty at times, surreal at times, silly at other times - and I've never read more detailed character studies in any other book. Rushdie blends history with myths, truth with fiction, and comes out with a terrific novel called Shalimar The Clown. Kashmir is the centre of this tale and holds together the narratives of India Ophuls aka Kashmira, Boonyi Kaul, Maximillian Ophuls and Shalimar. Do not read this if you like your stories straight - this is a twisted tale blurring the lines between murderers and victims.

All the Rushdie books that I've read before I began this one - The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Midnight's Children, Moor's Last Sigh, Enchantress of Florence, 2 years 8 months 28 nights, even Joseph Anton - have left me exhausted at the end and made me look forward to some ultra light reads that would give me some much needed relaxation. Some of his books were so tiring (I guess it is the unfinished Satanic Verses) that I dove directly for light-hearted children's books. But Shalimar the Clown is possibly the first Rushdie book to be surprisingly readable and light (comparatively, of course) . It took a lot of reassurance to convince myself that it really was written by his greatness :P. Almost all of Rushdie's signature elements seem to have been turned down by several factors or turned off entirely. The most striking absence in Shalimar is Rushdie's trademark wordplay. One of the very few wordplays could be seen in the naming of a royal banquet 36-courses-minimum. Grimus, Shame & Fury being the only Rushdie novels that I haven't read yet, I observe that the intensity of Rushdie's works has weakened gradually over time. All the books he has written in the 20th century stand in strong contrast with his recent writings - with the exception of 2 years - because of the undeniable loss of vigour.

World War 2, Kashmir, Post 9/11 USA - Rushdie weaves his story around such dynamic backdrops and manages to convey a lot more than the personal stories of our 5 main characters - Shalimar the Clown, Boonyi, Max, Rat and India. The depiction of Kashmir as a valley in flames couldn't have been done better. Religious extremism & its horrors is one of the most important themes of Shalimar the Clown - a common thread that almost all his Post-fatwa works have in common. But to dismiss it as a cliche would be fatal. It was very surprising to know that Kashmiri women were against veils. Rushdie's unfiltered love for his homeland is clearly evident in his exquisite prose which makes us look forward to the Kashmiri segments. Anyone who didn't have a clear grasp of the affairs in Kashmir would definitely know better after reading this book. Shalimar is very engaging despite the predictability of its plot. But those are the only good things that I have to say about Shalimar!

Shalimar suffers from the usual Rushdie problems - lack of depth in characters, a complete lack of likeable characters and glaringly contrived characters. I can understand that he wanted us to picture India as some extremely wild woman like no other, but she is the most artificial character that I'd read in recent times. A badly written clichéd strong-woman is what she ends up being. The entire Bhoonyi waiting-for-someone-better-to-take-her-somewhere-better seems too weak a foundation for the grand tale that is supposed to emerge. It is self defeating and completely undermines everything created thus far.

Shalimar is engaging, has some great paragraphs and illuminates the problem in Kashmir. But it has some serious flaws that are very difficult to overlook. A failed experiment - though a disappointing Rushdie is still better than some average writer at his very best.

Такий сильний роман, у якому є все - кохання і зрада, політика і релігія, військові події, є добро і зло, помста, що руйнує людину і перетворює її на вбивцю... Нелінійна оповідь, мандрівка у часі, деталізація в описі усіх головних (і не тільки) персонажів. Автор розповідає про якусь подію, що відбувається і відразу деталізує про історію місцини, оповідає, що було раніше, як жили люди...
Читалося нерівномірно, хвилями - було і дуже захоплююче, але й хотілося, можливо, менше про військові сутички, релігію і політику, хоча розумієш, що без цього неможливо зрозуміти сутність всього, що відбувалося, увесь той розкол між країнами, релігіями, зло ісламського тероризму...
Вразила доля головних персонажів, таке гостре закінчення, хто переможе?

With Salman Rushdie's fascinating novel, Shalimar the Clown I found it rather easy & often necessary to suspend disbelief, in part because this is no conventional story but rather an amazing fable that uses the fractious land of Kashmir as a metaphor for the India/Pakistan partition, Hindu/Moslem relations and perhaps the world at large.



On the surface, Shalimar the Clown appears as an updated, Kashmir-based Romeo & Juliet tale, seeming to portray an unsanctioned love affair between Shalimar (a Moslem) and Boonyi (Hindu), both born on the same day and an arranged marriage by the village elders that seems to fuse the disparate cultures of Pachigam, a mixed Kashmiri village that even includes a Jewish contingent, with all 3 factions serving on the town's governing body.

Alas, this apparently happy resolution is a very temporary one as the lovely Boonyi has a "ravenous longing for something she could not yet name" but which ultimately includes a one-way ticket out of Pachigam. This is where myriad complications set in & the complexity of Rushdie's fable takes over.

Shalimar's mother is an occultist, while his father trains his son as an acrobat & tight-rope performer who can transcend time & space, suggesting that "a rope could become air, a boy could become a bird, with metamorphosis the secret heart of life". Meanwhile, Boonyi's father is a pandit (educator), a widower who loves his daughter dearly, acting as both father & mother to her.

Another main figure, Max Ophuls, is Jewish, a background that puts him at odds with almost everyone in Europe but being gifted in many ways, in time he flees to the U.S. After WWII, Ophuls becomes a U.S. Citizen & eventually the American ambassador to India, at which point his attention is seized by the flirtatious dance of Boonyi, who is more than willing to be his consort in exchange for passage out of Pachigam. This sets in motion Shalimar's radicalization and a ceaseless quest for revenge. *To go beyond this point with further details on the primary sequence of events would be cause for a cautionary label on my review, something I attempt to avoid.



Colonel Kachhwaha declares that Kashmiris on both sides of the "Line of Control" demarcating the Pakistani zone from the Hindustani one treat it with contempt & he is said to bark like an English bulldog. The good Hindustani colonel has no wife but feels married to Kashmir, later being killed in his sleep by a cobra. With other novels Rushdie has previously used Mumbai, an ethnically & religiously mixed but often divided city, as emblematic of the problems of India but with Shalimar the Clown, Kashmir serves that role, at least until the action shifts to Los Angeles.

I found Rushdie's use of language very inventive & at times quite playful; for example, there is a character alternately called Jack Flack, Jock Flock, Judd Flood & Jake Flake. There is an "Iron Mullah" sounding like a contemporary hard rock band but actually a reincarnated figure who converted Kashmiris in the 15th Century.

There is also Bombur Yambarzal, clad in pots, pans & chicken blood, "the silly armor of righteousness & peace". Later, a colorful character named Olga Simeonovna, "Olga Volga" is the super at the building where Boonyi's illegitimate daughter, India, by Max Ophuls, is living in L. A. Olga sees marriage as akin to "car rentals, with no more glass slippers, cause the factory closed, there are no more princes & they shot the Romanovs in a cellar & Anastasia died."

The touches of magical realism begin with the aura of magic that Shalimar & his fellow performers seem to possess but later shift to Boonyi, the former dancer, who having fallen prey to various addictions & becoming obese after fleeing her home & Shalimar, undergoes a transformation after first dying upon her return to Pachigam. Here is a sample of Rusdie's prose at work at a moment when Boonyi's daughter, India, visits her mother's village:

She stood by her mother's grave & something got into her. Her mother's grave was carpeted in spring flowers: a simple grave in a simple graveyard at the end of the village near the place where the forest had reclaimed the iron mullah's vanished mosque. She knelt at her mother's graveside & felt the thing enter her, rapidly, decisively, as if it had been waiting below ground for her, knowing she would come. The thing had no name but it had a force & it made her capable of anything.

She thought about the number of times her mother had died or been killed. Her mother had left everything she knew & had gone in search of a future & though she had thought of it as an opening it had been a closing, the first little death after which came greater fatalities. She saw her mother standing in a blizzard while the people among whom she had grown up treated her like a ghost. Then in the hut on the hillside followed a long period of living death while death circled her waiting for its time & then death came in the guise of a clown.

Because of occasional distractions involving changes of time & place, keeping the wealth of characters in focus takes a bit of work. Both Shalimar & Boonyi undergo transformations of a different sort in Rushdie's novel and the ending may strike some as ambiguous. Ultimately, Shalimar the Clown is a rather dark fable but one I enjoyed very much.

**By way of a post-review comment, during the summer of 2016, I was most fortunate to be present for a world premiere performance at the St. Louis Opera Theatre of an opera based on Rushdie's Shalimar the Clown adapted by Jack Perla & librettist Rajiv Joseph. The opera did omit some of the characters in Rushdie's novel and rather inventively featured soprano Andriana Churchman very effectively playing both the parts of Boonyi & her daughter India, with Sean Panikkar a very convincing Shalimar.



The orchestra was augmented by the addition of tabla (drums) & sitar to insert a particularly Indian sound to the opera. Having just finished reading Shalimar the Clown I found the operatic version of the novel wonderfully evocative & quite a memorable adaptation. Here's hoping that other cities around the world have the opportunity to experience the opera.

***Images within my review: Author Salman Rushdie ; Max Ophuls, on whom Rushdie's character is loosely based; program cover from the St. Louis Opera Company performance of Shalimar the Clown in 2016.

While reading this book, I strongly felt that the story was made just to emphasise the political situation in Kashmir to European readers. There’s ample information on radical Islamism as well in the book.
Though the author tries to highlight the beauty of Kashmir, the magic, the play of words, the recalling as a summary- which were all highlights in Midnight’s Children, are diluted to a minimal charm. I expected the magic reality to fire my imagination. Instead, I was met with historical information lacking colourful descriptions.

It was such an easy read when compared to Midnight’s Children. My review is highly biased because of this same comparison.

A brilliantly powerful book about love, loss, belonging, and Kashmir.

"Shalimar the Clown" is a powerful meditation on human psychology, told through the experiences of primarily four very multi-dimensional characters. First, there is Ambassador Maximilian Ophuls, then there is Shalimar the Clown, his personal chaperone, his daughter India – named after the country – and a fourth character that ties all three of them together.

Set in the gardens of Kashmir, the ghettos of Strasbourg, the high-rises of California, and the streets of London – this book is a masterclass in narrative historical fiction. What I loved the most about the book was Rushdie's powerful account of Kashmir – the politics and poetics of the valley, the unfulfilled hopes and dreams of the women, men, and children there, and the conflict that literally develops before the reader's eyes. Rushdie not only transports us to Kashmir, he shows us how she thinks, feels, and experiences pain. But if Kashmir is the focal physical setting of the story, the metaphysical setting is in Shalimar the Clown's mind. Over the course of the story, we grow with him, and watch him laugh, smile, love, cry, fight, and a lot more.

This is the kind of book you will need dedicated headspace for, and while it can be a difficult read at times, it is not because of the prose, but because of how well Rushdie writes that you can't help but wonder how anyone can weave a magical tapestry out of mere syllables and vowels.

The supporting characters in the book are just as enigmatic as the main ones, and while it does make for a long read, it is compelling and one of those novels that simply stays with you – leaving a small imprint in a corner of your heart in a way that I doubt any other novel (except perhaps another Rushdie novel) can.

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I would rate this a 3.5 if I could — such a complex and interesting story followed between a cast of characters, each unique and intriguing in their own ways. However… there were a lot of parts that just droned on and on about details of descriptions or even entire events that felt useless — like it is expected of the reader to imagine these people and places, only for those images never to be brought up again. Overall I enjoyed it, but prepare yourself for some pacing issues if you pick it up.

But maybe the truth is that, as he used to say, our human tragedy is that we are unable to comprehend our experience, it slips through our fingers, we can't hold on to it, and the more time passes, the harder it gets.

My father says that the natural world gave us explanations to compensate for the meanings we could not grasp. The slant of the cold sunlight on a winter pine, the music of water, an oar cutting the lake and the flight of birds, the mountains nobility, the silence of the silence. We are given life but must accept that it is unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind.

I've been a reader for some time now & I've read a few good books but none of them have made me realise the power of fiction. Until now. Until I picked up 'Shalimar the Clown'.

Had anyone ever given us a non-fiction book about the issues related to Kashmir as raised in this book, we'd have probably abandoned it after 100 pages or so & I'm not lying or judging anyone when I say that, since that is pretty normal. That is perhaps since most of us have been watching the same thing over & over again in the news since what seems like eternity & we think we know everything about it & we love to have an opinion on the same, but guess what - we know absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. ZERO. And that is perhaps where 'Shalimar the Clown' succeeds so well - in enlightening the reader about atleast some of the aspects of the Kashmir issue, if not all.

Okay, here goes the story - Maximilian Ophuls, a WWII hero, former US ambassador to India & subsequently the CIA counter-terrorism chief, is knifed to death at the doorstep of his daughter India by his mysterious Kashmiri driver who calls himself Shalimar the Clown. What first looks to be a political assasination turns out to be a extremely personal one, linked to a woman in their past.

Pretty simple, right? Except that Salman Rushdie is no mean writer. What Rushdie does is that he weaves an epic narrative that transcends time, space as well as continents as we follow the lives & fortunes of the major players of this tale. We see ourselves transported back in the past, to a time when Kashmir was still what the Great Mughal emperor Jehangir pronounced as 'Paradise on Earth', where Muslims & Kashmiri Pandits practised secularism & tolerance towards each other & treated each other like brothers in bond, where the bond was strong enough to see a village of Muslims stand up for the honour of a Hindu girl, where the marriage of a Hindu & a Muslim was viewed not with skepticism but celebrated as a victory of the culture this paradise nurtured for centuries, where the people were willing to stand up for their principles of love & kinship even when faced with budding extremism.

We're then whooshed away to Europe, where bloodshed & strife is rife in the midst of World War II, as a young Max Ophuls establishes his reputation as a master forger in the Resistance against the Nazi forces & through his acts of daring and espionage, he is elevated to hero-like status. We cheer as he crosses enemy lines in a record-breaking flying adventure & seduces a high-ranking German official much to the utter disbelief of one & all. He also finds love & later marries a fellow spy (which eventually crumbles in the wake of his infidelities). Years pass by & then he is appointed as US ambassador to India, where he arrives to resolve an impending Indo-Pak border crisis & charms his Indian counterparts, winning their love & respect. Until he decides to go in pursuit of a love that is doomed from the very start, the cost of which must be eventually paid with his life.

Then there is Shalimar the Clown, who ditches his vocation of a public performer & turns to terrorism to avenge the betrayal of the love of his life. You feel his anguish & deep pain as his innocent self dwindles away in his chosen path of violence & revenge, the wronged husband whose wrath will destroy anything that comes between him & his sole mission of seeking vengeance against all those who have wronged him.

And there is that woman - the Woman - a free-thinking spirit feeling trapped in a closely-knit community, who wishes to fly away to distant lands & like the legendary Anarkali (a character she plays in her dance troupe) who desires the forbidden love of a prince. When she finally recognises an opportunity & seizes it with both hands, she realises to her misfortune that perhaps the grass wasn't really greener on the other side of paradise. Her actions & decisions ultimately shape the lives of everyone around her & symbolically, that of Kashmir.

As the norm goes, Rushdie invokes themes of magical realism & verisimilitude - lovers talk to each other despite being miles apart, they touch each other tenderly without actually touching & the ghosts of past keeps haunting the present lives of these characters, appearing in their dreams & nightmares.

And then comes an integral part of the story despite technically being a sub-plot in itself - Kashmir. Being of Kashmiri descent himself, the issue of Kashmir is obviously close to Rushdie's heart & as we watch the paradise turn into living hell for its residents as Kashmir is hammered & smashed by militants as well as that uniformed military force that calls itself the Indian Army, whose actions are no less questionable than those of the extremist groups. One passage that is particularly striking & is immensely moving as the beautiful village of Pachigam goes up in flames is as follows -

"Who lit that fire? Who burned that orchard? Who shot those brothers who laughed their whole lives long? Who killed the sarpanch? Who broke his hands? Who broke his arms? Who broke his ancient neck? Who shackled those men? Who made those men disappear? Who shot those boys? Who shot those girls? Who smashed that house? Who smashed that house? Who smashed that house? Who killed that youth? Who clubbed that grandmother? Who knifed that aunt? Who broke that old man’s nose? Who broke that young girl’s heart? Who killed that lover? Who shot his fiancée? Who burned the costumes? Who broke the swords? Who burned the library? Who burned the saffron field? Who slaughtered the animals? Who burned the beehives? Who poisoned the paddies? Who killed the children? Who whipped the parents? Who raped that lazy-eyed woman? Who raped that grey-haired lazy-eyed woman as she screamed about snake vengeance? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that dead woman? Who raped that dead woman again?"

Rushdie can often be brutal like this & you can feel the words tearing away at your heart, tearing away at that conscience of yours, tearing away at your ignorance.

Though Rushdie tries not to take sides & presents matters from the point of view of everyone involved (including that of the Indian Army, justified on few counts), he is critical of the tactics employed against the people by the terrorist groups & the Army - against the latter, he skilfully uses satire to bring out the bitter ironies in the much-tainted AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) & the extremities carried out under the same, something I feel Indians really should be aware about.

I don't really have anything to complain about, except maybe a fairly ordinary last few pages (not to mention a final flourish towards the end), but I don't really how it could've ended otherwise. Maybe it's just me trying hard to find some fault with this book.

4.5 to 5 stars for 'Shalimar the Clown' by Salman Rushdie. This is undoubtedly an important book & I highly recommend it for anyone who wishes to understand the Kashmir issue. A must read for fans of literary fiction & should you decide to read this, be prepared to be mesmerized by one of the most sublime storytellers of our times.

"There was no India. There was only Kashmira, and Shalimar the Clown."

4.25|5

This book was two months in the reading and it’s probably one of the reasons I had a big reading slump this Summer... but I still loved it so damn much. It’s not an easy book to read by any means, but for me it was totally worth it. I probably didn’t get all the references since it requires some history knowledge but I was there for the ride and I enjoy every minute of it.

A slow, ponderous and plodding narrative!

This is a book that is ostentatiously about the transformation of a Kashmiri stage performer into a vengeful assassin, but ends up being about too many things. The plot is the scorned love of the protagonist and his Kashmiri dancer wife. An American ambassador to India, an illegitimate daughter (named India), and the consequent murder of the ambassador by Shalimar The Clown, complete the plotline. In between, while giving a remarkable insight into the Kashmiri way of life, which sadly includes the terrorist camps operating at the Kashmir border, we see how Shalimar goes from being a fun-loving, talented gymnast to becoming a brutal, inhuman killing machine.

The story has many potential winning points, but there are so many sidetracks in the narrative that its very difficult to remain invested in the actual story. The author seems confused about the purpose of this book - is it a description of the Kashmir conflict, is it scorned love, is it obsessions, is it the pitfalls of ambition, or is it communal politics? In the end, apparenty unable to decide among those choices, he decides to talk about a little bit of all the above. And so, for pages on end, the actual story is put aside while the author expounds on all manner of subjects. Not surprisingly, this leads to a very disjointed narrative.

I believe that the main purpose of a fictional book should be the telling of a story. And if, through the telling of this story, you throw light on real-life subjects, issues or philosophies, its an added plus; but the story should at all times remain the focal point of the book. This book spectacularly fails to do that. And so it is very difficult to retain interest or any kind of continuity in the narrative.

Of course, considering that the writer is actually a genius, there are inevitable flashes of brilliance, like this line : "you never know the answers to the questions of life until you are asked". But such lines are few and far apart, and ultimately unable to redeem the book.

Not one of Rushdie's better works.