Description
The novel that set the stage for his modern classic, The Satanic Verses, Shame is Salman Rushdie's unforgettable epic.
Omar Khayyam Shakil had three mothers who shared everything. They shared the symptoms of pregnancy; they shared the son that they all claim to have borne on the same night. Raised at their six breasts, Omar's mothers teach him to live a life without shame. And it is training that proves very useful when he leaves his mothers' fortress and makes the fateful mistake of falling in love. For he finds himself an unwitting player in an ongoing duel between the families of two men - one a celebrated wager of war, the other a debauched lover of pleasure - living in a world caught between honour and humiliation, where a moment of shame could prove fatal.
'Shame is every bit as good as Midnight's Children. It is a pitch-black comedy of public life and historical imperatives' The Times
A masterful combination of history, myth, art, language, politics and religion from this legendary writer.
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), The Satanic Verses, and Quichotte (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature and was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's last Birthday Honours list in 2022.
Reviews
It is an astute, gleeful, political tale in which Rushdie dazzles with his prodigious gift for satire. * Guardian *
Salman Rushdie has earned the right to be called one of our great story tellers * Observer *
There can seldom have been so robust and baroque an incarnation of the political novel as Shame. It can be read as a fable, polemic or excoriation; as history or as fiction... This is the novel as myth and as satire * Sunday Telegraph *
Shame is every bit as good as Midnight's Children. It is a pitch-black comedy of public life and historical imperatives * The Times *
Salman Rushdie is a magnificent writer. He has a free-ranging imagination and a coarse, strong wit. He attackes language with energy and without constraint * Independent *
Book Information
ISBN 9780099578611
Author Salman Rushdie
Format Paperback
Page Count 288
Imprint Vintage
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 202g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 17mm