Conveying a political message through quality fiction is a difficult task. Salman Rushdie’s latest offering, Shalimar the Clown, highlights some of the challenges. At times, the book shows us the writer whose passionate, urgent voice earned him death threats and exile. But at others, the political focus takes away from the story. As a result, Shalimar is good, but not as good as it could have been.
Unsurprisingly, some of the best parts of Shalimar take place in Kashmir, in the past. Fables and tales of children growing up in an idyllic past provide the backdrop and the meaning for the contemporary part of the story. Here, Rushdie is in his element. The travails of a village of traveling chefs feel comfortably familiar and homey without draining them of their authenticity. The experience is exciting, enlightening, and enjoyable all at once.
The other great parts of the story also take place in Kashmir in the modern day. The idyllic past is charming, but it quickly becomes consumed by the struggles that have since torn Kashmir apart. Rushdie’s righteous anger is ably communicated, and the menace of the Islamic terrorists and the Indian military occupiers is vividly drawn with fascinating, frightening magical realism.
The modern American frame story that tries to draw everything together is distinctly less interesting. Part of the problem is that Rushdie’s musings about the culture of Los Angeles lack the exotic foreignness of Kashmir. A larger issue, though, is that the frame story is heavy-handed and inhuman. The pointed symbolism of the life of a girl named Kashmira lacks any semblance of subtlety or the authenticity that makes some of Shalimar so good.
That’s a shame, because the failure of the outer story really weakens the overall impact of the book. We’re left with a mostly enjoyable, at times disconnected story combined with some political anger. The reading experience is not bad, but when you put Shalimar down, don’t expect to take away a lasting message.
