Summary
Shalimar the Clown - Book review
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Extract
Salman Rushdie loses his cheerfulness: geopolitics, terrorism and adultery.
Shalimar the Clown Salman Rushdie (New York City: Random House, 2005), 416 pages.
In Shalimar the Clown, a novel of love, betrayal and the agonizing struggle over the contested Himalayan region of Kashmir, Salman Rushdie reveals a deep thread of pessimism--perhaps even despair--that is new to his work. This is no small thing for a writer whose comic talents run as deep as Rushdie's, and perhaps is intended to serve as a kind of a warning, a canary song about the age of jihad. I say new advisedly; even though this novel appeared in 2005, its concerns remain very much of the moment. Rushdie's prose is usually over the top, jammed with adjectives, clauses, asides and puns, the flow sometimes serving to obscure the characters' lack of a conventional novelistic inner life. Instead of such inward gazing, many of his characters are almost like actors, perhaps reflect...See the full content of this document
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