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Title: Shame : A Novel by Salman Rushdie ISBN: 0-312-27093-3 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 December, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.42 (19 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Beautifully disturbing
Comment: Shame is, in my opinion, the finest novel Rushdie has written yet. It's much darker thanany of his other work, disturbingly so, and the violence is of a kind not found in his other novels.The book traverses the sub-continent, moving through Bangladesh, India and Pakistan as effortlessly as the consciousness of most of the people who call themselves Bangladeshi, Indian or Pakistani. The emotion of Shame is a hook on which the novel is built. It isn't the center, though Rushdie often focuses on instances where his characters flush with redness. Rushdie spent part of his childhood in Pakistan (and has gone back since), the novel is pieced together, like most of Rushdie from a remembering that is incomplete and where the gaps are filled by fantasy. Shame attains a balance between the imaginatively outrageous and the real as it moves through time in the "other" country on the sub-continent. The story of a man/child who grows up in and, perhaps, out of a house with three aunts, each of whom is his mother, Shame stands for the people of the north-western sub-continent as only a work infused with divinely sharp humour can. Before the Satanic Verses, there was Shame, and Shame engaged in the same mode of literate heresy that Rushdie employed later in Satanic Verses. Only in Shame it was the root of all middle-eastern religions, Zoroastrianism that Rushdie focused on. And his repetition of a similar ancient heresy, like SV questioning the sharp distinction made between darkness and light (in God and creation), in the context of a faith that acknowledges, even births the Manacheean heresy. In a similar manner, Shame explores the realm between the human and barely human, and the madness that is in all of us. Shame isn't an easy read, it may even be so disturbing as to irritate you. But for me it is the supreme height of Rushdie's fiction to date, the strangest and most penetrating of all his work. -- Subir Grewal
Rating: 5
Summary: Pure brilliance
Comment: I have to say that I found this book much more comprehensible than The Satanic Verses. It's basically about Pakistan with all of its contradictions, faults and absurdity. It's eitehr a love letter or a hate letter to his home country and it's a history told in the magical realism style where every major political movement is started by a private incident and evey private exchange is fraught with dangers. He also calls Bhutto Virgin Ironpants - which I'm sure would have annoyed many feminists as much as the Ayatollah passages in The Satanic Verses annoyed the entire country of Iran. (oh, I'm sorry the official stance is that it was the Muhammed passages)
But for all its brilliance and nuance what I and my friends remember is the debate among the rebels over whether to have sex with teh docile sheep or the wild goats. Not even the people fighting the hostile regime are safe from scorn and ridicule.
The central metaphor is in two characters - one a man without shame and the other a woman who is embarrassed and overtly modest from birth. When she loses her modesty, she becomes a vicious animal destroying all in her path. I think that is the theme in that the country might be run by the shameless and the crass, but when the silent ones are pushed too far - watch out.
Even as a minor book this proves Rushdie's clarity of vision and his place as one of the greatest writers of teh 20th century.
Rating: 4
Summary: Entertaining political satire
Comment: Although Rushdie makes a half-hearted attempt to argue otherwise, Shame is obviously an allegory of Pakistani politics from the time of Pakistan's creation to the downfall of General Zia. Many of Rushdie's trademarks are on display. Historical and cultural influences are important to Rushdie, as he likes to trace families back several generations in order to explain the development of his main character(s). Once again we have several characters representing chauvinist, extremist elements, and Rushdie astutely portrays how they gain influence in political circles at the highest level. Rushdie also likes to blend fantasy with reality, and it is often difficult to know when to take him literally or not. I just recently read "One Hundred Years of Solitude" for the first time, and I realize retrospectively how much Rushdie borrows from Marquez and other magical realists. Thus, if you like this kind of writing, you will love this book. Even if you don't care for the magical realist style, however, you can still appreciate Rushdie's political and social insights. And even if you don't know or care about Pakistan, you can enjoy his remarkable wit and his flowing prose.
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Title: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie ISBN: 0140132708 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie ISBN: 0679744665 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 14 January, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Satanic Verses : A Novel by Salman Rushdie ISBN: 0312270828 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 01 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Ground Beneath Her Feet : A Novel by Salman Rushdie ISBN: 0312254997 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 16 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie ISBN: 0140157379 Publisher: Granta Books Pub. Date: November, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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