Shalimar the Clown

Praise

"A sprawling tale of love and politics. . . . A daring aesthetic and political balancing act that traffics in many of the major concerns of post-colonial literature, but always within an evolving and bravely empathetic story. . . . One of Rushdie’s best, and an important and rewarding must-read."
—National Post

"Read Shalimar the Clown for the effervescent fun factor that is always present in Rushdie’s work. . . and for its devastating portrait of the destruction of Kashmir."
—The Globe and Mail

"[Shalimar the Clown] is that rare highwire act, a literary thriller. It seems a vigorous rebutal to the recent dismissal of fiction by V. S. Naipaul, to the effect that ‘if you write a novel… it’s of no account.’"
—Financial Times (UK)

“A masterly deployment of interconnected narratives spanning six decades. . . . Dazzling. . . . A magical-realist masterpiece that equals, and arguably surpasses, the achievements of Midnight’s Children, Shame and The Moor’s Last Sigh. The Swedes won’t dare to offend Islam by giving Rushdie the Nobel Prize he deserves more than any other living writer. Injustice rules.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“The. . .transformation of Shalimar into a terrorist is easily the most impressive achievement of the book, and here one must congratulate Rushdie for having made artistic capital out of his own suffering, for the years spent under police protection, hunted by zealots, have been poured into the novel in ways which ring hideously true. . . . Shalimar the Clown is a powerful parable about the willing and unwilling subversion of multiculturalism.”
—Publishers Weekly

Praise for Salman Rushdie:
"Our most exhilaratingly inventive prose stylist, a writer of breathtaking originality. . . . He has become, as much for his convictions as for his creativity, the finest English writer of India."
—Financial Times (UK)

"With Rushdie one is always in the presence of a true original. . . . More than any other contemporary English writer, Rushdie makes the page sing with his prose."
—The Washington Post Book World

"A master storyteller.
—The Standard (UK)

"A great novelist, a master of perpetual storytelling."
—V. S. Pritchett

Praise for Fury:
"An exhilarating read. . . . One page of Fury is worth a thousand pages of the grey, risk-averse prose that passes so often for contemporary literary fiction."
—The Globe and Mail

"A beautifully written and carefully constructed novel. . . . [Fury] ricochets back and forth between well mannered realism and [Rushdie’s] own brand of what might almost be called surrealism — manic, absurdist, biting, over-the-top and very funny."
—The Vancouver Sun