"Don't take Sunset"

Last Thursday, I went to listen to Salman Rushdie read from his newest novel, Shalimar the Clown.  I've been reading Rushdie since college, and I've thought very highly of previous efforts such as Midnight's Children, The Jaguar Smile, The Satanic Verses, and The Moor's Last Sigh; I've been less impressed with a few books, such as Shame and Fury. 

To judge by the passages we heard, Shalimar the Clown is in many ways quite typical of Rushdie's writing: a tragic story wrapped in gallows humor; varied, lively settings--in this case ranging from German-occupied France in the 1940s to Kashmir in the 1960s to contemporary Los Angeles; and the prose is standard Rushdie, as well--breathless, colloquial, digressive.  

Shalimar does sound like a particularly promising Rushdie novel, though, if for no other reason because the author seems so invested in the subject matter: the story is rooted in the struggle over Kashmir and in "the psychology of fanaticism"--subjects which Rushdie, as he ruefully noted, "knows something about": his family is of Kashmiri extraction and he has very strong feelings about what's happened to the place in the half-century since partition; and, of course, there was that fatwa calling for Rushdie's assassination (the fatwa was later rescinded--hence Rushdie's current freedom to fly around the world flogging new books).  I'll let you know what else I think about the novel after I've finished reading it ...

( And then, there were the obligatory, cringe-worthy audience questions ... )

(Next post: I hike Mt Rainier!)