Someone close to me once said - this was praise, mind you - that Django Unchained was so unique because Tarantino had no respect for his audience. He made the film in his own messy, unorthodox manner and if you didn't like it - to hell with you. It made a kind of twisted sense.
I felt the same when I read this book. Rushdie is writing for himself - not for his audience - and the result is far from wonderful. In fact, its awful.
Writing is an inclusive activity. When you write, you want your readers to share your world, see things through your eyes, experience the texture of the tale as intimately as you experience it in your mind. This inclusiveness is something the writer must incorporate into his craft, and is exclusive of any literary virtuosity the writer claims to possess. It takes that extra 10 percent and it makes all the difference. A film, by virtue of its overpowering most of our senses can't help but include the viewer.
When I read the Moor's Last Sigh I was pleasantly surprised by its general tone. It wasn't over the top, there was a faint sense of nostalgia, a whimsy that had more to do with the personal setting (Bombay) than with any coherent sense of narrative. I probably shared in his enthusiasm for the tale, included myself, because of my soft spot for the city. The insane final parts of the tale were the least interesting. (I think they were set in Spain...though I might be wrong). There was a thin sliver of an umbilical cord connecting his tale to reality and that made it good enough.
Shame, on the other hand is untouched by any of these elements, any of which would have made this lump of schizophrenic parchment at least moderately readable. It isn't overlong (which is a blessing) but it manages to trump even the Ground Beneath Her Feet in terms of boredom, self indulgence and disbelief. Literary gymnastics can only take you so far.
The story covers the lives and generations of a large Islamic Family in a fictional Pakistan. Their characters mirror (more or less) the characters of major players in Pakistani political history - Zia ul Haq, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto etc. The main protagonist of the tale is the corpulent Omar Khayyam Shakil, born to three mysterious women out of wedlock and chronically devoid of shame; and his love affair with Sufiya Zenobia, a mentally challenged girl who is the repository of shame for all the main characters of the book. The story follows the rise and fall of their respective fortunes while paralleling the rise and fall of Pakistan itself. The half insane mother of Sufiya - Bilquis, Her father Raza Hyder, her Uncle Iskander Harappa and his wayward nephew Haroun. Arjumand Harappa and her mother Rani, the crazy Mullah Dawood and the three mothers atre all characters who walk onto and off the stage of this novel. Unable to understand the point of this "Oh so erudite" plot? I didnt either.
Politics, by virtue of its very nature is rooted in reality. Political dynasties are wonderful microcosms of the rise and fall of human fortunes, jealousy, love, lust for power and money. They are an excellent study of the hypocrisy inherent in religious ideology and the problems with combining religion and state. This could have been an excellent study in human fallibility if only Amitav Ghosh had written it.
Rushdie is in love with the concept of magical realism ( not, of course, more than himself). Our hero is born upside down and hence lives life on a perpetual precipice, two of his mothers feign pregnancy to protect the one who really conceived and undergo all the physical symptoms of pregnancy as a result, people go mad, dance around naked, swear, get in the family way, make weird prophecies and hang themselves. A philandering alcoholic wastrel cleans up overnight, a sex starved man becomes more obese the more he abstains from it and loses weight when he has sex, women give birth to twenty seven children and others transform...the list of this kind of nonsense goes on and on. Magical realism and politics are an uneasy mix, the magic and odd situations seem to trivialise the process of nation building to the point where the reader fails to connect. The last 20 pages took me a week to get through.
Its like David Lynch, Terry Gilliam and Scheherazade had a love child, who took a good, heavy dose of amphetamines. The out of control plot is broken by random asides and non existent political insight that Rushdie attempts to dish out to his viewer. Winning the Booker does not make you an authority in political history anymore than it makes you capable of spinning a good yarn.
Rushdie wrote Midnight's Children and The Moor's Last Sigh at the height of his powers. Most of the books he wrote after that seem to be a blatant attempt to cash in on earlier popularity. They are soppy, heavy handed missives written by a literary giant who obviously has nothing new to say. Your echoes are fading Mr. Rushdie, time to call it a day.
One star on five.

أعتقد أن ترجمات سلمان رشدي إلى العربية تخلي العرب يكرهوه اكتر من آيات شيطانية بمراحل.
حقيقي يعني الراجل صاحب واحد من أفضل الأساليب الأدبية في العالم، الترجمة بتقتل هذا الأسلوب تماماً... قرأت ١٨٠ صفحة بصعوبة شديدة وخلاص مش قادر، ارجع له لما ألاقي نسخة إنجليزية كويسة.

I have not read this for many years, but remember Rushdie's irreverent and fearless satire telling the history of Pakistan being a very entertaining read.

Unratable. Extremely problematic, longs for an editor, and yet, somehow, still worth reading.

Tam bir sınır romanı "Utanç".

I found this novel to be incredibly interesting and had me reflecting a lot while reading. Having studied extensively Arab/Middle Eastern/Islamic culture and being a former Arabic linguist, I enjoyed the author's story involving the characters, their cultural parameters, and their purpose. The central theme is shame: shame from within, seeing shame in the outside world, seeing shame in others, personal shame, living in shame, fear of shame, etc. The parallels of Pakistan's political climate in the late 70s-ealry 80s was satirized with close-to-fictional portrayals of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq.

This was my first Salman Rushdie novel and my initial impression was that it was confusing and disjointed. Once I got used to his style and even the narrator's breaks on the fourth wall, the story really took off. I enjoyed this book and I may read it again because I'm certain there are many little things I missed the first time.

Rushdie has a very unique style to his storytelling; he narrates as a character outside of his tale, yet is wholly invested in it. His tone is casual, imitating the convolutions of an orally told story with not all the bits told in order. In this way, he plays with temporal and spatial linearity very freely, giving hints of the future in tantalising teasers- but still manages to surprise the reader. Shame is about politics, but it is also about families, and failures, and the fractures that can break the human mind. It is about the modern world, but also imbued with the impossibility of Rushdie's imagination. The not-quite-any-one-thing nature of the novel is almost representative of Rushdie's own duality, living as a native-born Indian in England.

As one might expect, shame is a motif throughout the book. Rushdie explores it from many different avenues, and one sees it over and over again, setting events in motion which, like a swirl of dominoes, come crashing towards their denouement.

One facet of Rushdie's writing which surprised and intrigued me was the way he used metanarrative. He refers frequently to the imagined nature of Shame (perhaps to distract from the strains of truth that run deep beneath it?), both detailing the method of his characters' creations and treating them as real people. As a writer myself, I understand this bizarre life of the character as a figment of the author's imagination as well as a being with his own opinions on what should be done with him. It was nice for me to then be able to spy on another (more successful) storyteller's methods, much like Omar with his telescope.

All around, I found this book incredibly hard to put down. Rushdie is an engaging writer who spins his web in seeming randomness, but as the strands pull tighter, it becomes clear what a well-made piece of work Shame really is.

سلمان رشدي اسم مثير للجدل أين ما ذكر..ونحن حريصون دائما على إطلاق الأحكام دون أن نكلف أنفسنا عناء البحث وتكوين آراء خاصة بنا..تشبهنا ولا تعني سوانا.
"الآيات الشيطانية" هي الرواية التي أثارت الزوبعة وجعلت من رشدي اسما محرّما, وأصدرت ضده فتاوى تريق دمه..أنا لم أقرأ الرواية التي منعت ترجمتها إلى اللغة العربية (عساها تقع يوما ما في يدي).
ولكني قرأت العار..رواية أخرى "ثقيلة" وصعبة الهضم ومرهقة. كل ما فيها من أحداث غريبة تخلط بين واقع معروف لأنه ذكر في كتب التاريخ الحديث, وخيال يُقحمه الكاتب بين الأحداث الحقيقية حتى تعجز عن الفصل بينهما.
البطل في الرواية هو الراوي عن جدارة..راو مستفز لكل قارئ, يحرص على أن يجعلك تقرأ بكثير من التوتر والقلق, إذ يعن له أن يضع ساقا فوق أخرى بكل هدوء, ويقطع سياق أحداث تغيبك عما حولك فقط ليخبرك كيف سينتهي الموضوع , ثم يعود ليعتذر عن وقاحته مبررا فعلته بأنه غير قادر على كبح جماح هذه الرغبة..وهكذا مرار على مدى ما يقارب 400 صفحة.
الغريب هنا هو أن رغم معرفتك بما سيقع قبل وقوعه, إلا أنك لن تفقد عنصر المفاجئة عندما تعرف كيف وقع..
"العار" يقطر من كل حدث من أحداث الرواية. يحرص الكاتب الغريب أن يجعلك تجد هذا المعنى المتطرف طيلة قراءتك. مما يجعلني أتساءل "هل تراه استمتع بكتابة ذاك الكم من البشاعة والغرابة و العنف ؟؟ " .. من يدري؟..
الباكستان بين انفصالها عن الهند و دخول الروس إلى أفغانستان..هي مسرح الأحداث وزمانه. لكن الكاتب يصرّ أن القصة تحدث في القرن الخامس عشر..
بيئة خصبة لينبت الجنون ويمد جذوره. فوضى وكثير من الارتباك..انقلاب يجر آخر..قتل و مؤامرات..وشخصيات تحتاج منك تركيزا حتى لا تضيع بينها لكثرتها (ذكرتني قليلا بماركيز وروايته "مئة عام من العزلة" ).
قد تشعر عندما تنهيها أنك أضعت وقتك في كثير من الهراء..أو قد تعتبرها تحفة فنية قائمة المعالم..من يدري؟؟ ..

This was Rushdie's third novel which was an interesting story about violence and shame that brought me in contact for the first time with concepts of Sufism and the poetry of Omar Khayyam. It was as always well-written and easy to read and shows Rushdie's powers of narration growing in power and confidence.

Büyülü gerçekçilik konusundaki en başarılı yazarlardan birisi hiç kuşkusuz Salman Rushdie...

Marquez’den alıştığım tarzı - her ne kadar Salman Rushdie’nin dünya görüşü bir Batı’lı gibi de olsa, Doğu’nun kendine has gizemiyle süslenen edebi zenginliğinin etkisiyle - farklı bir şekilde okumak hayli keyifli oldu.

Herkese öneririm..!

P.S. Çeviri ve dizgi konusunda da böyle başarılı çalışmalara nadiren rastlanıyor! Rushdie’nin İngilizce, Urduca karışık ve zor dilini bu kadar akıcı bir şekilde çevirmek herkesin harcı olmasa gerek. Aslı Biçen’e hayran kalmamak elde değil. Yine dizgi konusunda da; neredeyse bir harf bile hata gözüme çarpmadı. Can Yayınları’na son dönemlerde bu konuda ara sıra sitem etsem de, bu kitapta kimin emeği varsa, kendisine büyük bir teşekkür borçluyum kendi namıma. Hakikaten bravo..!

What’s the point of magical realism? Rushdie helps us all out here with his allusion to a London production of Julius Caesar:

“I was with three visitors from Pakistan. They all loved the play.’How lucky you are,’ they envied me, ‘to live where such things can be put on.’”

Shakespeare had different political constraints, different censors, no “...Generals, all applauding wildly to signify their enjoyment of this patriotic work depicting the overthrow of imperialism by the freedom movement of Rome.” He would however, have recognized the ridiculous request to excise “that unpalatable killing...Surely that scene was not absolutely necessary?”

Set in “not Pakistan, or not quite”, the novel can be read as a dynasty struggle, a vindication of the importance of personal freedoms, and a philosophical treatise:

“This opposition - the epicure against the puritan - is...the true dialectic of history. Forget left-right, capitalism-socialism, black-white. Virtue versus vice, ascetic versus bawd, God against the Devil: that’s the game. Messieurs, mesdames: faites vos jeux.”

Making sense of national politics, especially in countries taking their first new steps with self-governance and democracy post-colonialism can get heavy and Rushdie keeps his analysis sardonic:

“I must tell you what things were like in those early days after the partition: the city’s old inhabitants, who had become accustomed to living in a land older than time, and were therefore being slowly eroded by the implacable revenant tides of the past, had been given a bad shock by independence, by being told to think of themselves, as well as the country itself, as new.”

Magical realism lets the reader, like the audience in Shakespeare’s theatre, abandon fetters of reality-checks - did this really happen, and like Rushdie says? - and surrender to the story, the lushness of one narrative:

“The newness of those days felt pretty unstable; it was a dislocated, rootless sort of thing.”

The novel is at once literary and political: Rushdie shows us the people behind the edifice of nationalism and in them we recognise ourselves:

“[Raza] altered the television schedules so drastically that people began summoning repair men to fix their sets, because they could not understand why their TVs were suddenly refusing to show them anything except theological lectures, and they wondered how these mullahs had got stuck inside the screen.”

If a review consists largely of sections of the novel, then the novel must be worth reading, and this definitely is. Overlaying, permeating everything is the double-word (“justlikethat”, sharpsharp”) rhythm of Rushdie’s language, with which the characters reach you, reminding you that their story is not yours, but you can enter it, understand it, revel in it, and - such is your privilege - leave it when you put down the novel.

From Midnight Children on, seems that Roshdie’s preference moves tward the language rather than the narration itself. Comparing ”The ground beneath of her feet” and ”Midnight children” one comes to a more beautiful language but less interesting events.
در اثار رشدی زبان از زیبایی خارق العاده ای برخوردار است. واژه هایی که رشدی در زبان انگلیسی ابداع می کند و عمدتن مخلوطی از انگلیسی هندی- بریتانیایی ست، گاه به توجیه صحنه، عمل یا شخصیت در روایت کمک شایانی می کند. بسیاری از واژه های ابداعی رشدی در انکلیسی بریتانیای امروز به راحتی جا افتاده و معمول شده است. در "زمین زیر پای او(زن)" آن چنان که در "بچه های نیمه شب" و "شرم" دیده ایم، داستان دیگر به اندازه ی فضا سازی و بیان منظور از اهمیت بالایی برخوردار نیست.