There are quite a few supporting characters, all with their own identity and voice. He makes them all believable, they change and grow and you believe that they could – and would – evolve in the ways, they do. The way Rushdie manages to tell the story of these people, is superb. When Boonyi gets pregnant, a huge scandal erupts, and ultimately, Max’s wife leaves him – and leaves India with his and Boonyi’s child, a girl she names India. She leaves Shalimar and deeply crushed, he vows to kill her and any child she might get and he joins various terrorist groups in order to learn how to kill – and to wait for the right time to kill Boonyi. Even when it means that she becomes the American ambassador’s mistress. They loved each other very much and was therefore allowed to marry, but for Boonyi, life in the tiny village in Kashmir is not enough so when she gets a chance to get out, she takes it.
Shalimar was once a young happy muslim boy, completely in love with Boonyi, a young hindu girl. Rushdie then takes us back in time to explain why Shalimar killed Max. It begins in Los Angeles where India Ophuls’ father Max, is killed on her door step by his chauffeur, Shalimar the Clown. On a background of the conflict in Kashmihr between hindus and muslims, between India and Palestine, the lives of Boonyi, Shalimar and Max unfold. Secondly, it’s a both fascinating and interesting story. There are sections where he breaks it up and changes it completely to underline what’s happening in the story. First of, it’s beautifully written – Rushdie has a magnificent grasp of the language and really uses it to make his points. I really enjoyed reading Shalimar the Clown. So just like when I read Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, this was a test to see if Rushdie’s works are for me.Īnd it turns out, they are. Glimpses of that book has stayed with me, yet it still intimidated me enough to stay away from Rushdie’s novels ever since. I did enjoy the beautiful language but I think that I had problems with understanding the book because I didn’t know enough about Islam and maybe also, because I didn’t have a lot of experience with reading magical realism. Several years ago, I read The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie and felt very overwhelmed and outsmarted.
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