Shame

“[Rushdie’s] novels pour by in a sparkling, voracious onrush . . . each paragraph luxurious and delicious.”—The New Yorker

“A pitch-black comedy of public life and its historical imperatives.”—The Times (UK)
 
“There can seldom have been so robust and baroque an incarnation of the political novel as Shame. It can be read as a fable, polemic, or excoriation; as history or as fiction. . . . This is the novel as myth and as satire.”—Sunday Telegraph
 
“Shame is and is not about Pakistan, that invented, imaginary country, ‘a failure of the dreaming mind.’ . . . Rushdie shows us with what fantasy our sort of history must now be written—if, that is, we are to penetrate it, and perhaps even save it.”—The Guardian

“Mr. Rushdie’s style [is] a source of delight, a bright stream of words . . . a voice at once whimsical, sly and exclamatory, full of apostrophes and asides, flexible enough to incorporate the up-to-date slang and obscenities of the warring men and the peculiar speech rhythms . . . of the Pakistani ladies in a state of excitement.”—The New York Times Book Review

“The extravagantly tragicomic nightmare evoked by Shame . . . does for Pakistan what Mr. Rushdie’s equally remarkable . . . Midnight’s Children did for India. The narrative voice of Shame creates its own irresistible logic. In a postscript to his story, the author acknowledges having quoted Milan Kundera, Franz Kafka, Nikolai Erdmann and Georg Büchner. Here and there in the text, one can’t help thinking of Gabriel García Márquez. These are extraordinary writers with whom to be associated, but it’s company that Salman Rushdie deserves.”—The New York Times
 
“Revelation and obscurity, affairs of honor, blushings of all parts, the recession of erotic life, the open violence of public life, create the extraordinary Rushdie mood.”—The Guardian (London)
 
“Shame should consolidate [Rushdie’s] position as one of the finest young writers around. This novel of crossed family destinies in contemporary Pakistan teems with interesting characters, dramatic events, and marvelous verbal inventions. Like its predecessor, it recreates an exotic but thoroughly believable world that is a delight to experience. . . . A wonderful book.”—Quill & Quire