4,5

In Shalimar il clown ho ritrovato il Rushdie di I figli della mezzanotte. Amo i suoi giochi di parole, la sua ironia, la sua impertinenza, i suoi personaggi. Abbiamo sì una storia di amore, gelosia, tradimento e vendetta, ma il fulcro è la situazione storica del Kashmir (che se la passa molto male ancora oggi). Di solito nei romanzi si parla di background storico, ma con Rushdie la storia viene portata in primo piano grazie ai personaggi che in qualche modo incarnano e rappresentano i vari paesi coinvolti. La storia la fa da protagonista e impariamo della nascita dei conflitti nel Kashmir, del terrorismo jihadista (dall'Afghanistan alle Filippine), ma anche dell'occupazione nazista in Francia durante la seconda guerra mondiale. Rushdie analizza le debolezze umane (soprattutto l'avidità), che alla fine sono quelle che portano a perpetrare il male e ai conflitti. Ci sono anche descrizioni dell'arte, la cultura, le usanze e i paesaggi kashmiri.

Solo cinque capitoli, ognuno dedicato a un personaggio, in cui impariamo a conoscere i personaggi principali e la loro storia partendo dall'infanzia. Il primo capitolo è stato il più lento e mi ci è voluto un po' per ingranare, ma poi il romanzo diventa scorrevole e coinvolge interamente.

Joy keeps lending me books that I dislike in interesting ways.

There is no doubt that this is a collection of beautiful sentences. The writing is vivid, lyrical, and evocative. Unfortunately it's mostly evocative of horror. The sections all pretty much start out "Here are some people. Horrible things happened to them. Let's examine their lives leading up to the horrible things." The Kashmir sections are the loveliest, I think, but that just makes the torture, rape, and systematic murder in them all the more gruesome.

My other main objection is the Max Ophuls section. If I never read another book about a brilliant, multitalented Renaissance man who gets all the girls, treats all of them like commodities, behaves in general like a raging narcissist that nevertheless knows his lines and is still supposed to be a sympathetic figure it will be too soon. It made me even angrier that he was supposed to be worthy of pity because he got his throat slit in the first section. (This isn't a spoiler since it's mentioned with increasingly tedious foreshadowing every fifth sentence from the second page on.)

So yeah, women are treated like dirt, minorities are treated like dirt, people in regions the possession of which is disputed by major powers are treated like dirt, and being treated like dirt makes people crazy. That's the takeaway. The presence of a bow- and gun-shooting, boxing, martial-artist hot female instrument of revenge in the last 75 pages doesn't balance the rest of it, really.

Shalimar the Clown is a book filled with richly detailed pictures. They're just not pictures I want in my head.

How do you review a book that's made sure to push you into a deep set of feelings?
The characters that make you take sides even though the writer doesn't?

The characters that don't shy away from their worst behaviour to just buy into the goodness of the world. Because in their world goodness is a non-existent entity now. An entity that is long gone leaving behind it's inhabitants with raw and unabashed feelings about the world.

This is a story of love, loss, revenge or is it all the same? Is it the story about Kashmir? Is it the story from the past? Is this the story of Max who escaped the clutches of Nazis back in the World War era? Is this the story of Bhoomi who dreamt of getting out of her tiny village in Kashmir and have dreams bigger than her own life? Is this the story of Shalimar who gave all for love, blood and last, revenge? Or is it the story of our own kind who seem to lose touch with humanity and kindness? Who lose touch with the real world and move along with the dark and subject others to pain and themselves pain?

There's a reason why I picked Salman Rushdie for one of my classes at the university and it's precisely to understand world through a complex and an iconoclast of a writer. A writer who holds no bars when he talks about his own homeland or about an institution that means a lot to him? Or just the beliefs that he understands but doesn't let it ride over him? From some of the books I've read in the last few months, this one stands out for it's raw depiction of human life and most of all the crown of our nation that's left to bleed since I can remember - Kashmir.

Also, another historical fiction suggestion for you that I'd recommend blind-folded. ✨

Unpopular opinion incoming: A book that's more refined than 'Midnight's Children' itself and will be a lot more interesting to you cus this doesn't have an overdose of magical realism and a work of Rushdie's that doesn't seem to have many takers. I like myself some underdog challenges.

2,25?

Ik vond dit echt een ordinaire broodschrijversthriller, maar hij had me wel vast op het einde. Oeps!!

Ik vond Woede nochtans indrukwekkend goed (doch even irritant ongeloofwaardig). Duivelsverzen kopen, I guess.

DNF - I got 180 pages in and just cannot anymore.

Shoutout to people who have dealt with annoyingly vague endings.

Shalimar the Clown is a revenge story told almost entirely in flashbacks. The ultimate showdown is two paragraphs away from the last line, and the fateful meeting of the protagonist with the antagonist is a few lines away from 'The End'.

An arrow slices through the air, zeroing in on the target and you are told of the almost certain possibility that it won't miss its mark (because it never does). But in this case, the archer is tipsy. There won't be a second arrow or a second chance.

The ultimate showdown, the boss level fight, the grand finale, all of it, frozen in time, just like the frost-bitten closure lying shriveled somewhere. Why would you have me emotionally invested in characters, then lock them in a death-battle without telling me who kills who.

Жодного героя, якому хочеться співчувати і, водночас, співчуваєш усім тим невинним загубленим душам, знищеним у горнилі війни.
Величезним мінусом була руснява баба в ролі сусідки героїні

¿El sexo mueve al mundo?, al menos en esta novela sí. Todo un conflicto internacional se crea entre Estados Unidos y la India porque el embajador de Estados Unidos en la India se obsesiona con una bailarina casada. El esposo traicionado promete venganza, se convierte en terrorista y años después mata al embajador.

En general me ha gustado, habla de la resistencia francesa en la 2a. Guerra Mundial, de la guerra entre India y Pakistán. Pero hay 2 partes que no me gustaron, es casi al principio donde relata la historia familiar de los protagonistas y lo entrelaza con algunas leyendas de la India que se me hizo denso y aburrido. La otra parte al final que, entrelazó los disturbios de Los Angeles de 1992 y siento que no tenían nada que ver y metió algo de magia para resolver el libro.

Excellent book. For me, it started out painfully slow. I was not terribly interested in the first characters he introduced to me. Nor was I terribly interested in the story. CONTINUE READING! The histories of these characters are deep, deep, deep. Rich and beautiful language. By the quarter mark of the book I was completely riveted. For the first part of the book I found myself, irritatingly, asking, "when is he going to get to the point!" and the rest of the book eagerly asking, "what happens NEXT!" This is not, by any means, a lighthearted tale. This is a grim tale about revenge. Plain and simple revenge that takes a long and circuitous route through the lives of the individual, Shalimar the Clown, out for revenge and his inevitable prey. I found the historical aspects fascinating. The creation of many militant groups including the Taliban. An excellent journey through a aprt of the world I knew very little about.

After reading some of the more explicitly fabulist works of Salman Rushdie, this feels so grounded in a world I know, even if it is populated by Kashmiri acting troupes and 64-course meals and potato witches.

And Shalimar the Clown is entertaining, witty, and snarky as it flies from LA to Alsace to Kashmir to the Philippines, seemingly wanting to suck every aspect of globalized society (fundamentalism, Bretton Woods, decolonization, interracial romance, you name it) up into its propeller. It's not the sort of sprawling book that shimmers from every corner, seeming to sum up the whole world in a single text; rather, it's far more loose and ragtag. That doesn't make it a crappy novel-- it's a very good one-- but it makes it Not Midnight's Children, so if you're expecting Midnight's Children or his (infinitely inferior, frankly) Satanic Verses, you're probably going to be a bit disappointed.

A vast amount of wonderful stories from the beautiful Kashmir valley to Mulholland Drive LA, from Jewish-French resistance in WW2 to the rise of Muslim extremism in the far East. As the Hindu dancer Buunyi Numan betrays her love for her Muslim husband "Shalimar the Clown" and elopes with American ambassador Max Ophuls this fact unleashes a torrent of hate and murder.

There are so many layers and metaphors in this book that you can very well read it as a comprehensive world history of modern times. I would give 6 stars if I could.

A journey from delightful through terrifying to intensely sad, all sprinkled with moments of dark humour. It was wonderful but now I need to read something much lighter while I recover