Although Shame by Salman Rushdie was published in 1983, I’m still going to include it in my 2012 Reading Challenge because it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in that year. Here are my thoughts on the novel and I suppose the best place to start is trying to say what this novel is about. Like the best novels, Shame is about a lot of things so this is no easy task. The story falls several main characters—Omar Khayyam Shakil (‘the peripheral hero’), Sufiya Zinobia (the heroine), and the families of two men who are, if not enemies, then adversaries—General Raza Hyder and Prime Minister Iskander Harappa. The story takes place in the country of Q in the fifteenth century, but as the narrator tells us, Q is like Pakistan, but it’s not Pakistan. This is important because on one level, the novel can be read as a satire of a historical moment in Pakistan’s history; though the narrator (with tongue in cheek) tells us that his story is simply a fairy tale. As the story unfolds, we watch the characters rise and fall, and as the narrator makes sure to explain, shame is the root of violence.
I’ve been teaching this book in one of my literature classes, and one of the things that frustrates my students is that it is not told in order—that is, the story isn’t told linearly, from the beginning to the middle to the end. However, personally, this is one of the things that I love about the book because it makes me have to pay more careful attention to what is happening, and it makes me the reader have to do some work in order to see how all of the pieces fit together. Another thing that has frustrated my students, or maybe puzzled them is a better description, is the use of magical realism. Again, this is something that I love about the book. I like how Rushdie introduces fantastic elements into the story but couches them as being completely ordinary. One of the characters in the book, Good News (that’s her nickname) gives birth to twenty-seven children. Of course it’s fantastic, and yet it totally makes sense within the story and by making it so fantastic, the point that we are supposed to understand can’t fail to be received by us as readers.
On the one hand, I think that this is an outstanding book, but on the other hand, I can see how it wouldn’t appeal to everyone. Indeed, I can see many readers putting this book down. Still, I would definitely recommend it to readers who are looking to read a novel that makes them think but also that pushes them a little bit out of their comfort zones. I also think that you need to have an open mind when coming to this book. In my opinion, this story takes place in Q, but it’s not just about Q, and it’s not just about one specific culture or area of the world. While I was reading this book, I found a lot that I could relate to and I found a lot of my own culture in this book. I definitely think it’s a good read.
