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Shalimar the Clown
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Shalimar the Clown (2005) (edit title/settings)

by Salman Rushdie (Author) (edit contributors)

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“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

This is the story of Maximilian Ophuls, America’s counterterrorism chief, one... read more

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  • “he was never more hidden than when he seemed most open.”
    India about her father
  • “In such a city there could be no grey areas, or so it seemed. Things were what they were and nothing else, unambiguous, lacking the subtleties of drizzle, shade and chill. Under the scrutiny of such a sun there was no place to hide.”
    India
  • “(Bombur was) making a noise that would have raised the dead had the dead not preferred to remain peacefully underground and ignore the appaling racket.”
  • “Within a year the catastrophe of Europe brought that age of the world to an end.”
    Max on the beginning of the war
  • “Four days later the Nazi flag flew over the Cathedral and the darkness began.”
  • “The future was being born and he was being asked to be its midwife.”
    Maximilian is asked to help the reconstruction
  • “Azadi! Paradise wanted to be free! "But free isn't free of charge", Anees Noman told his brother.”
  • “This terrible time, this in-between time, in which we have all been dying of doing nothing, is coming to an end.”
    Shalimar to his wife
  • “An age of fury was dawning and only the enraged could shape it.”
    Shalimar
  • “(Max) had been a dealer in the dangerous, hallucinogetic narcotic of the future, offering it at a price to his chosen addicts, the reptilians cohorts of the future.”
  • “Everybody was sensitive nowadays. Everybody had a vocabulray to peddle. Words had become as painful as sticks and stones, or maybe skins had grown thinner.”
  • “I am your black Scheherezade.”
    India to Shalimar in a letter
  • “Who lit the fire? Who burned the orchard? Who shot those brothers….Who killed the children? Who slaughtered the parents? Who raped that lazy eyed woman? Who raped the grey haired, lazy eyed woman who screamed about snake vengeance? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that woman again? Who raped that dead woman? Who raped that dead woman again?””
    Salman Rushdie
  • Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers
  • They neither know nor shape their own nature; rather, their nature knows and shapes them. There are no surprises in the animal kingdom. Only Man’s character is suspect and shifting. Only Man, knowing good, can do evil. Only Man wears masks. Only Man is a disappointment to himself. Only by ceasing to need the things of the world and relieving oneself of the needs of the body . . .”
    Highlighted by 14 Kindle customers
  • “The question of death is also the question of life, panditji, and the question of how to live is also the question of love. That is the question you have to go on answering, to which there is no answer except in the going on.”
    Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers
  • “Families,” sighed Firdaus Noman in despair, “are the narrow-minded, low-grade cause of all the discontent on earth.”
    Highlighted by 12 Kindle customers
  • We are given life but must accept that it is unattainable and rejoice in what can be held in the eye, the memory, the mind.
    Highlighted by 11 Kindle customers
  • In my life men were like shoes. I had two of them and they both wore out. After that I learned you could say to go barefoot.
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  • This is what loss was, what death was: an escape into the luminous wave-forms, into the ineffable speed of the light-years and the parsecs, the eternally receding distances of the cosmos.
    Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers
  • Off with their heads! Snick-snack! Chop, chop, until you’re free. Freedom is not a tea party, India. Freedom is a war.”
    Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
  • Honor ranked above everything else, above the sacred vows of matrimony, above the divine injunction against cold-blooded murder, above decency, above culture, above life itself.
    Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
  • “When you pray for what you most want in the world,” he said, “its opposite comes along with it. I was given a woman whom I truly loved and who truly loved me. The opposite side of such a love is the pain of its loss. I can only feel such pain today because until yesterday I knew that love, and that is surely a thing for which to thank whoever or whatever you like, the goddess, or fate, or just my lucky stars.”
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
  • “The nature of overwhelming might,” he would later write in The Man of Power, “is such that the powerful man does not need to allude to his power. The fact of it is present in everyone’s consciousness. Thus power does its work by stealth, and the powerful can subsequently deny that their strength was ever used at all.”
    Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
Show all 23 quotes from this book

Organizations edit see section history

First Sentence edit see section history

At twenty four, the Ambassador's daughter slept badly through the warm, unsurprising nights.

Table of Contents edit see section history

India
Boonyi
Max
Shalimar the clown
Kashmira

Glossary edit see section history

  • pandit: 1. A Brahman scholar or learned man.2. Used as a title of respect for a learned man in India.
  • sarpanch: the head of a panchayat, a village council in India

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

  • names/identity: suggested from the begining in the discussion of the importance of names for India. Later developed on several ocassions (see Jack Flack/Jock Flock etc)p.13 -India senses she is just a sign for the driver, Shalimarp.148-Max as a forger of identities for La Resistancep.226 - Boonyi becomes the Living Dead One, 'erasing herself'p.245 - Abdullah grows weaker, is seen as a 'dying personality'p.267- Shalimar sees how it si possible to erase oneself in a causep.301 - Anees Noman's identity crisis is solved: 'I used to worry that you would go so deep inside yourself that you might just vanish completely. But look at you: here you are.'p.345 - India/Kashmira's transformation in school
  • mirrors: India acknoledges she makes her behaviour a mirror oif her father's - a reflection but also a twisted one, inverted.In the fighter camp, Moro warns Shalimar he 'sees through' his fake devotion for the cause: 'I see through you like window. You are no man of God.'
  • power: It is introduced in the first part with Max's allegorical story of tha man seeking power but coming out with just a portion of the real one he got. Later it is often referenced, especially by India thinking about her father as a man of power.
  • light: mentioned in the first pages as cruel; in 'Max' - referred to again in relation to the war and the coming of the Nazis.p.309 - after the destruction of Pachigam: 'There are things that must be looked at indirectly because they would blind you if you looked them in the face, like the fire of the sun.'

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Salman Rushdie (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Random House
Country: USA
Publication Date: 2005
ISBN: 978-0679783480
Page Count: 416

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • Midnight's Children
  • The Satanic Verses

Books with Additional Background Information edit see section history

   
  • Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children: A Reader's Guide (Continuum Compact)
  • Imaginary Homelands
  • The Rushdie Affair: The Novel, the Ayatollah, and the West

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

   
  • The Dead

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