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As always Salman Rushdie’s writing transports the reader into the heart of the places he
writes about – in this case Kashmir, Los Angeles, and Paris during the second world war. Rushdie’s descriptions, his perspective, and the parallels he draws are sublime.
Rushdie is a master storyteller, and Shalimar the Clown doesn’t disappoint. And even though I’ll never understand the strange compulsion of literary writers for using omniscient point of view (and I would have loved this intimate story even more if Rushdie had allowed the reader to settle into the mind of one character at a time), I won’t criticise it’s use in such skilled hands.
Shalimar the Clown is the story of obsessive, possessive lust and revenge, and the intertwining of disparate lives. As with several of Rushdie’s books, he begins close to the end of the story, with the assassination of former ambassador Max Ophuls on the doorstep of his illegitimate daughter’s apartment.
The second part is a Romeo and Juliet-style story of Kashmiri teenagers, known as Boonyi and Shalimar. Briefly, the story seeks a happier ending when their Hindu and Muslim families allow the intermarriage. But trouble is brewing in paradise, and Kashmir is caught between the feuding India and Pakistan.
Next is the story of Max’s youth in Alsace, joining the French resistance when his Jewish parents were removed from their home by the Nazis, the same night Max was making plans for them all to leave the country. Max’s skills as an artist develop into that of a forger, and his parents’ printing company is invaluable for producing false documents and passports.
In the resistance, Max meets his future wife, and their joint story of daring and escape sees them become the poster couple for post-war euphoria.
Penultimately is Shalimar the Clown’s story, from tightrope-walking magician to Muslim terrorist. All this is backstory to the almost ordinary love quadrangle that destroys at least as many lives as Romeo and Juliet and The Illiad put together.
To begin with the characters are full and vital and I was intrigued to find out how these people would, or could, succeed with their dreams. It’s difficult to decide who to have hope for, when each character gains only at another equally loved character’s loss. My only disappointment was that Rushdie makes this decision for the reader, but reducing initially fascinating characters to caricatures – Boonyi, The Grey Rat, Shalimar, and, to a lesser extent, Olga Volga, and the annoying Colonel Tortoise and the Iron Mullah. Only Max and Kashmira remain rounded and retain the reader’s empathy, which I thought weakened the book slightly.
Shalimar’s ridiculous obsession is truly “clown-like”, hence the title, but deadly, and unnervingly realistic. There is a great deal of historical comment on the emergence of our current social situation, and Rushdie’s parallels paint a disturbing warning.
copyright © Elsa Neal 2007 (Please contact the
for permission to reprint this article.)
Shalimar
the Clown is available from Random House. Also
by Salman Rushdie:
The
Enchantress of Florence
Midnight's Children (Booker of Bookers prize winner)
The
Satanic Verses
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Related
links:
Salman
Rushdie at the British Arts Council
From Random House:
Shalimar
the Clown
The
Enchantress of Florence
Midnight's Children
The
Satanic Verses
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