Shalimar the Clown

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'This is Rushdie at his most flamboyant best' John Sutherland, Financial Times 'Rushdie's most engaging book since Midnight's Children' Observer Shalimar the Clown was once a figure full of love and laughter. His skill as a tightrope walker was legendary in his native home of Kashmir. But fate has played him cruelly, torn him away from his beloved home and brought him to Los Angeles, where he works as a chauffeur. One morning he gets up, goes to work, and brutally slays his employer, America's former counter-terrorist chief Maximilian Ophuls, in full view of the victim's illegitimate daughter, India. Despite the political overtones, it soon emerges that this is a murder with a much darker heart to it. The killing has its roots halfway across the globe, back in Kashmir, a ruined paradise not so much lost as shattered. And gradually it emerges that beyond this unholy trinity of Max, India and Shalimar, lurks a fourth, shadowy figure, one who binds them all together. 'This is Rushdie at his most flamboyant best' Financial Times

Sir Salman Rushdie has received many awards for his writing, including the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 1993 Midnight's Children was judged to be the 'Booker of Bookers', the best novel to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. In June 2007 he received a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

A brilliant symphony... Exceptional... One of Rushdie's best novels yet * Independent * Extraordinary... Worth engaging with at every level; a thrilling story told in thrilling language * The Times * Shalimar the Clown is Rushdie's most engaging book since Midnight's Children. It is a lament. It is a revenge story. it is a love story. And it is a warning * Observer * Deeply disturbing and immensely moving... An exquisite, broken thing of pain and beauty * Independent * Excellent... A characteristically daring walk along the tightrope of fiction * Sunday Telegraph *