Shalimar the Clown: A Novel

Salman Rushdie

Random House Publishing Group, Sep 6, 2005 - Fiction - 416 pages

“Dazzling . . . Modern thriller, Ramayan epic, courtroom drama, slapstick comedy, wartime adventure, political satire, village legend—they’re all blended here magnificently.”—The Washington Post Book World

“Absorbing . . . Everywhere [Rushdie] takes us there is both love and war, in strange and terrifying combinations, painted in swaying, swirling, world-eating prose that annihilates the borders between East and West, love and hate, private lives and the history they make.”—Time

This is the story of Maximilian Ophuls, America’ s counterterrorism chief, one of the makers of the modern world; his Kashmiri Muslim driver and subsequent killer, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the clown; Max’s illegitimate daughter India; and a woman who links them, whose revelation finally explains them all. It is an epic narrative that moves from California to Kashmir, France, and England, and back to California again. Along the way there are tales of princesses lured from their homes by demons, legends of kings forced to defend their kingdoms against evil. And there is always love, gained and lost, uncommonly beautiful and mortally dangerous.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post Book World, Time, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Christian Science Monitor Rocky Mountain News

About the author

Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a former president of PEN America. His books have been translated into over forty languages.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Shalimar the Clown: A Novel
• Author: Salman Rushdie
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2005
• ISBN: 1588364844, 9781588364845
• Length: 416 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Political; Fiction / Romance / Contemporary