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Review of Shalimar the Clown, by Salman Rushdie
(Random House, 2005)
First aired on NPR August 30, 2005
SALMAN RUSHDIE'S latest novel, Shalimar the Clown, is set mainly in Los Angeles and Kashmir. Twenty-four-year-old heroine India Ophuls languishing in her L.A. apartment opens the novel. Her father, European-born American diplomat Max Ophuls (named apparently after the late film director), named her after the subcontinent to which he was posted as American ambassador. That's where-after seeing her mother, Bhoomi, perform-he fell resoundingly in love with her, except that that the Kashmiri dancer happened to be married to Noman, a traveling performer with the stage name of Shalimar the Clown. A lot of names, but worth remembering. Their story takes on the question of, as Rushdie puts it, "how it came about that...