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In the 21st century, Shalimar?s painful, terrifying themes are both fantastical and devastatingly real. To evidence otherwise, Rushdie offers a note of cautious optimism: people can work out their differences if left alone by ideologues or fanatics.
Random House
September 2005
Featuring: Max Ophuls
416 pages
ISBN: 0679463356
Hardcover
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Contemporary
From one of the leading literary figures of our time, a
gripping international tale of love and revenge, and the
ancient and modern conflicts from which they spring. Los Angeles, 1991. Ambassador Maximilian Ophuls, one of the
makers of the modern world, is murdered in broad daylight
on his illegitimate daughter India’s doorstep, slaughtered
by a knife wielded by his Kashmiri Muslim driver, a
mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the clown. The
dead man is a charismatic World War Two Resistance hero, a
man of formidable intellectual ability, a former US
ambassador to India and subsequently America’s counter-
terrorism chief. The murder looks at first like a political
assassination, but turns out to be passionately personal. This is the story of Max Ophuls, his killer and his
daughter — and of a fourth character, the woman who links
them, whose story finally explains them all. It is an epic
narrative that moves from California to Kashmir, from Nazi-
occupied Europe to the world of modern terrorism. Along the
way there is kindness, and magic capable of producing
miracles; there is also war — ugly, unavoidable and
seemingly interminable. And there is always love, gained
and lost, uncommonly beautiful and mortally dangerous. Everything is unsettled. Everything is connected. Lives are
uprooted, names keep changing — nothing is permanent. The
story of anywhere is also the story of everywhere else.
Spanning the globe and darting through history, Rushdie’s
narrative captures the heart of the reader and the spirit
of a troubled age.
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