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Ամոթ
«Ամոթ» վեպի հիմքում Պակիստանի նորագույն պատմության իրական իրադարձություններն են, բայց հեղինակն ինքը այն անվանում է նոր տիպի հեքիաթի պես մի բան, որ ներկայացնում է իրականության դիցաբանական և պատմական ընկալումը։ Սա խոստովանանք չէ, մեղադրական պամֆլետ չէ, ընտրյալների համար ինտելեկտուալ կոկտեյլ չէ: Այստեղ կյանքն է, ինչպես որ կա՝ կատարվածի ամբողջ խելագարությամբ և անիրականությամբ. անպիտան ծնողներ և «փոքր մարդիկ», մեծ հավակնություններ ու կոտրված սրտեր, կոռումպացված կամ գաղափարական քաղաքական գործիչներ, արյուն, պատերազմ, էժան զանգվածային մշակույթ և ամեն տիպի ու գունավորման պաշտամունքներ: Պատմությունը երեք ընտանիքի մասին է՝ խենթ ու խիզախ գեներալի, բուռն անցյալ ապրած հավակնոտ քաղաքական գործչի և հիպնոսացնող բժշկի: Այս երեքի ճակատագրերը սերտորեն միահյուսված են, և յուրաքանչյուրում կա յուրահատուկ զրնգուն մի թել՝ նրանց կողքին կանգնած կնոջ թելը: Գրողի երևակայությունն աննկարագրելի և անկաշկանդ է, դրանում փոթորկվում են դարաշրջաններն ու իրադարձությունները, ճակատագրերը, մարդիկ, կենդանիները, աստվածներն ու հրեշները: Այս գիրքը էպիկական ֆանտասմագորիա է, որում մեկտեղվել են հեքիաթը, սև կատակերգությունն ու վսեմ ողբերգությունը:
460 pages, Hardcover
First published September 8, 1983
626 people are currently reading
15785 people want to read
About the author
Salman Rushdie
201 books13.1k followersSir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British and American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2023.
Rushdie's personal life, including his five marriages and four divorces, has attracted notable media attention and controversies, particularly during his marriage to actress Padma Lakshmi.
After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, Rushdie survived a stabbing at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.
In 1983, Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him 13th on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses. Rushdie was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in April 2023.
Rushdie's personal life, including his five marriages and four divorces, has attracted notable media attention and controversies, particularly during his marriage to actress Padma Lakshmi.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 807 reviews
September 2, 2023
"When a reader falls in love with a book, it leaves its essence inside him …" — Salman Rushdie
This was my first venture into the incredible mind of Salman Rushdie and I have to say he does not leave one wanting for lovely, metaphorical prose! He has an intense, edge-of-your-seat writing style that keeps the account moving along at a fast pace.
Set in an imaginary Islamic society, the book explores shame in all its variations. The characters are swimming in their indignity from the outset. Rushdie brings the seven deadly sins to life and then throws fury into the mix, creating quite an exciting narrative!
The story begins with three sisters, Chunni, Munnee and Bunny, locked up in their father’s palatial mansion, waiting for daddy dearest to die so they can reap their inheritance. And when he does, what a party they have! As sometimes happens when young girls are turned loose on the world, a pregnancy occurs, but to say it was unplanned would be untrue. The sisters longed for a baby and so, as one, they became mother to illegitimate Omar Khayyam.
Omar, a slothful and disturbed youth, eventually leaves the compound - and his three strange mothers – to embark on a life of gluttony and sin in the outside world. He had been home-schooled to never feel shame, so he and his friend, Iskander, go on to live a debauched life of legendary proportions. The character list is seemingly endless and there are many sad, sinful, shame-filled endings. At times, I became lost in the complexity of the expanding cast and had no idea what was happening. I eventually caught up and was able to stay with the subject matter. There are underlying currents of politics within a country in turmoil, but the novel didn’t heavily lean toward any political agenda.
Overall, I liked the book. It was told in a conversational way and I felt as if I had sat down with a friend as he launched into a story. Rushdie, as the narrator, does veer off track, reciting accounts of his own that were completely unrelated to the actual folktale of Shame. But he eventually returned to the matter in hand.
His writing is beautiful, but this is not an easy read and I had to pay very close attention.
All things considered, I am so glad I tried Rushdie!
This was my first venture into the incredible mind of Salman Rushdie and I have to say he does not leave one wanting for lovely, metaphorical prose! He has an intense, edge-of-your-seat writing style that keeps the account moving along at a fast pace.
Set in an imaginary Islamic society, the book explores shame in all its variations. The characters are swimming in their indignity from the outset. Rushdie brings the seven deadly sins to life and then throws fury into the mix, creating quite an exciting narrative!
The story begins with three sisters, Chunni, Munnee and Bunny, locked up in their father’s palatial mansion, waiting for daddy dearest to die so they can reap their inheritance. And when he does, what a party they have! As sometimes happens when young girls are turned loose on the world, a pregnancy occurs, but to say it was unplanned would be untrue. The sisters longed for a baby and so, as one, they became mother to illegitimate Omar Khayyam.
Omar, a slothful and disturbed youth, eventually leaves the compound - and his three strange mothers – to embark on a life of gluttony and sin in the outside world. He had been home-schooled to never feel shame, so he and his friend, Iskander, go on to live a debauched life of legendary proportions. The character list is seemingly endless and there are many sad, sinful, shame-filled endings. At times, I became lost in the complexity of the expanding cast and had no idea what was happening. I eventually caught up and was able to stay with the subject matter. There are underlying currents of politics within a country in turmoil, but the novel didn’t heavily lean toward any political agenda.
Overall, I liked the book. It was told in a conversational way and I felt as if I had sat down with a friend as he launched into a story. Rushdie, as the narrator, does veer off track, reciting accounts of his own that were completely unrelated to the actual folktale of Shame. But he eventually returned to the matter in hand.
His writing is beautiful, but this is not an easy read and I had to pay very close attention.
All things considered, I am so glad I tried Rushdie!
March 4, 2018
Shame - a perfect tool of mass control for those who are shameless enough to use it!
Oh, for those of you who are not familiar with Salman Rushdie’s storytelling skills: even his characters suffer from confusion and dizziness while he is working on them. Somewhat nauseous after the ride, I try to put two sentences together that make sense of the extraordinary reading experience I just had. It is hard, though, for more happens in a subclause in Rushdie’s universe than other people manage to put into the whole plot of a 500-page-novel.
You could argue that this is the defining novel of what makes us human, mythologically speaking. After all, one of the most popular myths in world history claims that the transition between animal and human was based on the feeling of shame.
Eve - who, as a woman, has to add guilt and shamelessness to her curiosity and subsequent shame - steps out of the boundaries set to her by an omniscient authority, an authoritarian and blindly intolerant government, focused on keeping the status quo rather than on development. She eats of the tree of knowledge. The first thing she learns is that there is a commandment for humans, as opposed to animals, which she was not aware of before:
“Thou shalt not be naked!”
As it is a rather random commandment in a world where the sun is always shining, and where creatures live in natural harmony, Eve needs to be coerced into accepting it as a valid and non-negotiable tradition. She needs to feel SHAME in order to get dressed. Then she needs to feel GUILT about having found out that she is naked. And she needs to be PUNISHED for thinking and acting on her own, the most dangerous thing a woman can ever do. Thus an illogical vicious circle starts, completely unnecessary in a free society, but desperately needed to control women within a patriarchal theocracy.
“Dress as you like, and according to your needs” would have been the ticket to a fair and tolerant community, but where is that to be found in the world of patriarchy, which invented shame to impose both sexual oppression and political power? For shame can be read as honour gone wrong as well, and honour is the military pillar on which patriarchy builds its castles - using the blood and the bodies of the young men who believe in the myth.
In Rushdie’s novel, the characters explore the idea of shame as a driving force of violent action and reaction in a magically transcended Pakistan. The comical exaggerations of the characters help ease the pain of injustice that shines through each page, for as the narrator of the story claims: “Realism can break a writer’s heart.”
Shame, honour, the need to cover up unpleasant truths, the need for “revenge” to erase shame from memory, those are the guidelines that lead the narrative towards an explosion of cosmic dimensions: “There are things that cannot be permitted to be true”.
You can read the novel as a dynamic battlefield between male characters who define their own honour or shame by their control (or lack thereof) of the women in their households. Sexual failure is a shame that cannot be permitted to be true for a man. Sexual activity is a shame that cannot be permitted to be true for a woman. Well, that leaves very little room for positive interaction. As the narrator tells the anecdote of a father who killed his only daughter, growing up in London, for being with an English boyfriend, he reflects on his own social indoctrination, which allows him to understand the murderer, based on the shame/shamelessness doctrine which engenders perpetual violence:
“But even more appalling was my realization that, like the interviewed friends etc., I, too, found myself understanding the killer. The news did not seem alien to me. We who have grown up on a diet of honour and shame can still grasp what must seem unthinkable to peoples living in the aftermath of the death of God and of tragedy: that men will sacrifice their dearest love on the implacable altars of their pride.”
So what do the characters of Rushdie’s novel do to deal with the inherited shame and shamelessness? They make sure to externalise the shame, to put it into a specially designed monster character, similar to the portrait of Dorian Gray, which carries the unpleasant stains of life (according the societal dogma of the setting!) for all the rest of the family.
I don’t want to give away the dramatic showdown of personified shame locked into a vessel of fragile mental health - for that is the solution the narrator can come up with: only an inner child can remain “pure”. It is part of grown-up human life to face sexuality, which carries the stigma with the label “Shame”.
Suffice to say I felt a hilarious need to laugh at the mess humankind has created for itself with that doctrine of honour, shame and shamelessness. It came first, according to myth, and therefore overrides all the secular, social agreements for peaceful and harmonious living together.
“Thou shalt not kill, steal or lie”, except for when your pride is attacked or shame is involved. Then please do whatever is required to regain your god-damned (no, sorry: god-pleasing!) honour. Unless you are a woman. Then just suffer your shame while listening to men calling you shameless for engaging in sexuality with them. Tough fate - but remember that “shame is collective”.
But Rushdie wouldn’t be Rushdie if he didn’t offer another solution as well, a third way, between disintegration and dictatorship. The narrator muses on Büchner’s Danton's Death. He reflects that people may seem like Robespierre accusing Danton for being a person who dares to “shamelessly enjoy life”, but they are not only like him. They are a bit of both:
“The people are not only like Robespierre. They, we, are Danton too. We are Robeston and Danpierre. The inconsistency doesn’t matter; I myself manage to hold large numbers of wholly irreconcilable views simultaneously, without the least difficulty.”
That is the world we need: a world where we don’t have to feel shame for being different, for changing our minds, for moving from our origins and letting go of old concepts of thinking which have proven disastrous since the beginning of mythological thinking. Be a Danpierre and respect your neighbour who is a Robeston, and don’t kill each other or live at each other’s expense. Don’t hurt what is different from you, and don’t see diversity as an insult to your ideas, rather as a homage to human versatility and inventiveness, of which you are a product yourself.
I have to finish this review before I quote the story in its entirety, probably without even catching all it means to me.
I just say: I lift my hat to you, Salman Rushdie (hoping that the Shame Monster won’t chop off my head when I reveal myself)! You are a true master of stories too real to be true, in a literal sense of the wor(l)d. But we all know that literal thinking is a killing machine, especially where myths are involved.
Bravo! Standing ovations!
Oh, for those of you who are not familiar with Salman Rushdie’s storytelling skills: even his characters suffer from confusion and dizziness while he is working on them. Somewhat nauseous after the ride, I try to put two sentences together that make sense of the extraordinary reading experience I just had. It is hard, though, for more happens in a subclause in Rushdie’s universe than other people manage to put into the whole plot of a 500-page-novel.
You could argue that this is the defining novel of what makes us human, mythologically speaking. After all, one of the most popular myths in world history claims that the transition between animal and human was based on the feeling of shame.
Eve - who, as a woman, has to add guilt and shamelessness to her curiosity and subsequent shame - steps out of the boundaries set to her by an omniscient authority, an authoritarian and blindly intolerant government, focused on keeping the status quo rather than on development. She eats of the tree of knowledge. The first thing she learns is that there is a commandment for humans, as opposed to animals, which she was not aware of before:
“Thou shalt not be naked!”
As it is a rather random commandment in a world where the sun is always shining, and where creatures live in natural harmony, Eve needs to be coerced into accepting it as a valid and non-negotiable tradition. She needs to feel SHAME in order to get dressed. Then she needs to feel GUILT about having found out that she is naked. And she needs to be PUNISHED for thinking and acting on her own, the most dangerous thing a woman can ever do. Thus an illogical vicious circle starts, completely unnecessary in a free society, but desperately needed to control women within a patriarchal theocracy.
“Dress as you like, and according to your needs” would have been the ticket to a fair and tolerant community, but where is that to be found in the world of patriarchy, which invented shame to impose both sexual oppression and political power? For shame can be read as honour gone wrong as well, and honour is the military pillar on which patriarchy builds its castles - using the blood and the bodies of the young men who believe in the myth.
In Rushdie’s novel, the characters explore the idea of shame as a driving force of violent action and reaction in a magically transcended Pakistan. The comical exaggerations of the characters help ease the pain of injustice that shines through each page, for as the narrator of the story claims: “Realism can break a writer’s heart.”
Shame, honour, the need to cover up unpleasant truths, the need for “revenge” to erase shame from memory, those are the guidelines that lead the narrative towards an explosion of cosmic dimensions: “There are things that cannot be permitted to be true”.
You can read the novel as a dynamic battlefield between male characters who define their own honour or shame by their control (or lack thereof) of the women in their households. Sexual failure is a shame that cannot be permitted to be true for a man. Sexual activity is a shame that cannot be permitted to be true for a woman. Well, that leaves very little room for positive interaction. As the narrator tells the anecdote of a father who killed his only daughter, growing up in London, for being with an English boyfriend, he reflects on his own social indoctrination, which allows him to understand the murderer, based on the shame/shamelessness doctrine which engenders perpetual violence:
“But even more appalling was my realization that, like the interviewed friends etc., I, too, found myself understanding the killer. The news did not seem alien to me. We who have grown up on a diet of honour and shame can still grasp what must seem unthinkable to peoples living in the aftermath of the death of God and of tragedy: that men will sacrifice their dearest love on the implacable altars of their pride.”
So what do the characters of Rushdie’s novel do to deal with the inherited shame and shamelessness? They make sure to externalise the shame, to put it into a specially designed monster character, similar to the portrait of Dorian Gray, which carries the unpleasant stains of life (according the societal dogma of the setting!) for all the rest of the family.
I don’t want to give away the dramatic showdown of personified shame locked into a vessel of fragile mental health - for that is the solution the narrator can come up with: only an inner child can remain “pure”. It is part of grown-up human life to face sexuality, which carries the stigma with the label “Shame”.
Suffice to say I felt a hilarious need to laugh at the mess humankind has created for itself with that doctrine of honour, shame and shamelessness. It came first, according to myth, and therefore overrides all the secular, social agreements for peaceful and harmonious living together.
“Thou shalt not kill, steal or lie”, except for when your pride is attacked or shame is involved. Then please do whatever is required to regain your god-damned (no, sorry: god-pleasing!) honour. Unless you are a woman. Then just suffer your shame while listening to men calling you shameless for engaging in sexuality with them. Tough fate - but remember that “shame is collective”.
But Rushdie wouldn’t be Rushdie if he didn’t offer another solution as well, a third way, between disintegration and dictatorship. The narrator muses on Büchner’s Danton's Death. He reflects that people may seem like Robespierre accusing Danton for being a person who dares to “shamelessly enjoy life”, but they are not only like him. They are a bit of both:
“The people are not only like Robespierre. They, we, are Danton too. We are Robeston and Danpierre. The inconsistency doesn’t matter; I myself manage to hold large numbers of wholly irreconcilable views simultaneously, without the least difficulty.”
That is the world we need: a world where we don’t have to feel shame for being different, for changing our minds, for moving from our origins and letting go of old concepts of thinking which have proven disastrous since the beginning of mythological thinking. Be a Danpierre and respect your neighbour who is a Robeston, and don’t kill each other or live at each other’s expense. Don’t hurt what is different from you, and don’t see diversity as an insult to your ideas, rather as a homage to human versatility and inventiveness, of which you are a product yourself.
I have to finish this review before I quote the story in its entirety, probably without even catching all it means to me.
I just say: I lift my hat to you, Salman Rushdie (hoping that the Shame Monster won’t chop off my head when I reveal myself)! You are a true master of stories too real to be true, in a literal sense of the wor(l)d. But we all know that literal thinking is a killing machine, especially where myths are involved.
Bravo! Standing ovations!
July 7, 2022
"Shame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture."
—Salman Rushdie (excerpt from the book).
Oh, Salman, my beardy bunnykins … gah! You’ve only gone and let me down AGAIN! *sigh*
I revere Rushdie. I even proclaimed him to be one of my favourite authors, right here on my profile page, alongside Dickens, Márquez and dear old Dumas. But, alas, here’s another book of his that cannot hope to rival the magnificence of Midnight's Children.
Set in a country that’s 'not quite Pakistan' (but nevertheless bears an uncanny resemblance to it, nudge, nudge, wink, wink), Salman cooks up a modern-day fable infused with a bouquet garni of religious taboos, social prejudices and bizarre relationships.
Illegitimate Omar Khayyam (named after the famous poet) is brought up by a triumvirate of bonkers sisters, one of whom is his mother. He has the pick of six nipples as each sister takes turns to breastfeed him (for some reason this put me in mind of she-wolves suckling either Romulus or Remus).
They guardedly hide him away from the spiteful world outside within the faded elegance of a grand house (think Miss Havisham and Estella in Great Expectations).
Omar, who later becomes a man fatter than fifty watermelons and devoid of shame, falls in love with simpleminded Sufiya, who conversely siphons up all the shame there is in the world and then morphs into a mythological beast who goes on to behead a flock of turkeys and a small number of humans!
Rushdie is his usual playful self and, in a postmodern way, even invites himself into the narration, almost as if he was telling his story to people sitting around a campfire.
Now, I love Mr Rushdie's gift for sharp-witted wordplay, but in this case, an overabundance of resplendent prose only succeeds in damming the narrative stream.
And I absolutely know I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, but the story became so rambling, so complex and so 'out there' that I found it hard to keep up. In fact, for much of my read, I didn't have a Scooby* what was going on!
There were memorable moments, of course there were: the scene in which the three sisters each adopt hear-no-see-no-speak-no-evil-positions on receipt of bad news was pure comedy gold!
Salman, I know you’re reading this (he can't get enough of my stuff), but can you please stop swanning around glitzy cocktail parties and instead write something worthy of your amazing talent?
Come on, buddy, make me proud of you again.
I know you'd like that.
At the risk of seeming contradictory, it was still better than most books out there - hence the four stars.
* Scooby Doo: clue
—Salman Rushdie (excerpt from the book).
Oh, Salman, my beardy bunnykins … gah! You’ve only gone and let me down AGAIN! *sigh*
I revere Rushdie. I even proclaimed him to be one of my favourite authors, right here on my profile page, alongside Dickens, Márquez and dear old Dumas. But, alas, here’s another book of his that cannot hope to rival the magnificence of Midnight's Children.
Set in a country that’s 'not quite Pakistan' (but nevertheless bears an uncanny resemblance to it, nudge, nudge, wink, wink), Salman cooks up a modern-day fable infused with a bouquet garni of religious taboos, social prejudices and bizarre relationships.
Illegitimate Omar Khayyam (named after the famous poet) is brought up by a triumvirate of bonkers sisters, one of whom is his mother. He has the pick of six nipples as each sister takes turns to breastfeed him (for some reason this put me in mind of she-wolves suckling either Romulus or Remus).
They guardedly hide him away from the spiteful world outside within the faded elegance of a grand house (think Miss Havisham and Estella in Great Expectations).
Omar, who later becomes a man fatter than fifty watermelons and devoid of shame, falls in love with simpleminded Sufiya, who conversely siphons up all the shame there is in the world and then morphs into a mythological beast who goes on to behead a flock of turkeys and a small number of humans!
Rushdie is his usual playful self and, in a postmodern way, even invites himself into the narration, almost as if he was telling his story to people sitting around a campfire.
Now, I love Mr Rushdie's gift for sharp-witted wordplay, but in this case, an overabundance of resplendent prose only succeeds in damming the narrative stream.
And I absolutely know I'm not the sharpest tool in the box, but the story became so rambling, so complex and so 'out there' that I found it hard to keep up. In fact, for much of my read, I didn't have a Scooby* what was going on!
There were memorable moments, of course there were: the scene in which the three sisters each adopt hear-no-see-no-speak-no-evil-positions on receipt of bad news was pure comedy gold!
Salman, I know you’re reading this (he can't get enough of my stuff), but can you please stop swanning around glitzy cocktail parties and instead write something worthy of your amazing talent?
Come on, buddy, make me proud of you again.
I know you'd like that.
At the risk of seeming contradictory, it was still better than most books out there - hence the four stars.
* Scooby Doo: clue
June 21, 2025
“This was the time immediately before the famous moth-eaten partition that chopped up the old country and handed Al-Lah a few insect nibbled slices of it, some dusty western acres and jungly eastern swamps that the ungodly were happy to do without. Al-Lah's new country: two chunks of land a thousand miles apart. A country so improbable that it could almost exist.”
“Feelings were running so high that even going to the pictures had become a political act. The one-godly went to these cinemas and the washers of stone gods to those; movie fans had been partitioned already. The stone-godly ran the movie business and being vegetarians they made a very famous film about a lone, masked hero who roamed the Indo-Gangetic plain liberating herds of beef cattle, saving the sacred, horned, uddered beasts from slaughter. The stone-gang packed the cinemas where this movie was shown; one-godly rushed to see imported, non-vegetarian Westerns in which cows got massacred and the good guys feasted on steaks. Mobs attacked the cinemas of their enemies. It was a time for all types of craziness then.”
“The Maulana thought it was his right to begin the assault on the poor, fat, prematurely pubescent symbol of incarnate sin. He flung himself to his knees at Omar's feet; and ground his forehead ecstatically into the dirt by Omar's toes, calling out: 'O God! O scourging Lord! Bring down upon this human abomination Thy sizzling fountain of fire!' Bilal rushed up to the boy as the Maulana prostrated himself for the 17th time and the garland of shoes was hurled at Omar’s direction. Just then the Maulana straightened up to howl at God, and there was the fateful necklace, hanging around the Divine's neck.”
“We who have grown up on a diet of honour and shame can still grasp what must seem unthinkable to peoples living in the aftermath of the death of God and of Tragedy: that men will sacrifice their dearest love on the implacable altars of their pride. Between shame and shamelessness lies the axis upon which we turn; meteorological conditions at both these poles are the most extreme, ferocious type. Shamelessness, shame; the roots of violence.”
************
Salman Rushdie published ‘Shame’ in 1983, two years after his winning the Booker Prize for ‘Midnight’s Children’, for which this was also shortlisted. As good as his breakthrough novel was, ‘Shame’ is more readable, without the run-on sentences and idiosyncratic syntax. It is set inside a semi-fictionalized Pakistan, but not really much so since the story includes PM Bhutto, executed when General Zia seized power in 1977. The story begins in pre-Partition India as a grand-father dies. He has three daughters who have never left the mansion where they were born, and then throw a ball where British colonists are invited. One sister becomes pregnant but it is unclear which as they all show signs of expecting.
The city Q (Quetta), located near the Afghanistan border, is scandalized and the sisters retreat into the mansion never to set foot outside again. They name the baby Omar Khayyam, after the 11th century polymath, and he is sequestered in the home as well. Growing up he develops powers of hypnotism that he practices on the servants and he uses a telescope to view the world beyond the walls. A vast library provides him with self learning, until the age of twelve when the sisters agree to allow him to leave for school. They advise him to avoid anything that would incur the forbidden emotion of shame. His emotionally stunted childhood leads to actions and attitudes, violence and perversion, once he leaves home.
Seen as a bastard and halfbreed by the locals, who also bear grudges against the sisters, Omar is taunted and tormented by young and old alike. He is adopted by his teacher and falls in love with his classmate who is put in a position of shame by use of hypnosis. An astute student, he wins a scholarship to study in Karachi as the sisters conjure another offspring. After graduating as a doctor Omar becomes the son-in-law of General Hyder, a fictional portrayal of General Zia, future president of Pakistan, whose daughter becomes possessed by a demon. Future Prime Minister Harappa, a stand-in for PM Bhutto, is a wealthy playboy who studied in Britain. Their wives, Bilquis and Rani respectively, are related by marriage.
Omar is drinking buddies with Harappa and they carouse together in brothels and casinos. Interfamily conflicts and their personal slights put Hyder and Harappa at odds until revenge is taken and the stain of shame erased. Rushdie’s narrative power makes the story take on an almost mythical stature. Although the novel is mostly told in the third person there is also a mysterious narrator who interjects himself into the story, a fictionalized Rushdie who is from Bombay, spent time in Pakistan and moved to England. Rushdie was inspired by an honor killing of a girl by her father in London. He alternates between a fictitious and actual Pakistan. The story is both tragic and comic, a difficult balance to achieve.
“Feelings were running so high that even going to the pictures had become a political act. The one-godly went to these cinemas and the washers of stone gods to those; movie fans had been partitioned already. The stone-godly ran the movie business and being vegetarians they made a very famous film about a lone, masked hero who roamed the Indo-Gangetic plain liberating herds of beef cattle, saving the sacred, horned, uddered beasts from slaughter. The stone-gang packed the cinemas where this movie was shown; one-godly rushed to see imported, non-vegetarian Westerns in which cows got massacred and the good guys feasted on steaks. Mobs attacked the cinemas of their enemies. It was a time for all types of craziness then.”
“The Maulana thought it was his right to begin the assault on the poor, fat, prematurely pubescent symbol of incarnate sin. He flung himself to his knees at Omar's feet; and ground his forehead ecstatically into the dirt by Omar's toes, calling out: 'O God! O scourging Lord! Bring down upon this human abomination Thy sizzling fountain of fire!' Bilal rushed up to the boy as the Maulana prostrated himself for the 17th time and the garland of shoes was hurled at Omar’s direction. Just then the Maulana straightened up to howl at God, and there was the fateful necklace, hanging around the Divine's neck.”
“We who have grown up on a diet of honour and shame can still grasp what must seem unthinkable to peoples living in the aftermath of the death of God and of Tragedy: that men will sacrifice their dearest love on the implacable altars of their pride. Between shame and shamelessness lies the axis upon which we turn; meteorological conditions at both these poles are the most extreme, ferocious type. Shamelessness, shame; the roots of violence.”
************
Salman Rushdie published ‘Shame’ in 1983, two years after his winning the Booker Prize for ‘Midnight’s Children’, for which this was also shortlisted. As good as his breakthrough novel was, ‘Shame’ is more readable, without the run-on sentences and idiosyncratic syntax. It is set inside a semi-fictionalized Pakistan, but not really much so since the story includes PM Bhutto, executed when General Zia seized power in 1977. The story begins in pre-Partition India as a grand-father dies. He has three daughters who have never left the mansion where they were born, and then throw a ball where British colonists are invited. One sister becomes pregnant but it is unclear which as they all show signs of expecting.
The city Q (Quetta), located near the Afghanistan border, is scandalized and the sisters retreat into the mansion never to set foot outside again. They name the baby Omar Khayyam, after the 11th century polymath, and he is sequestered in the home as well. Growing up he develops powers of hypnotism that he practices on the servants and he uses a telescope to view the world beyond the walls. A vast library provides him with self learning, until the age of twelve when the sisters agree to allow him to leave for school. They advise him to avoid anything that would incur the forbidden emotion of shame. His emotionally stunted childhood leads to actions and attitudes, violence and perversion, once he leaves home.
Seen as a bastard and halfbreed by the locals, who also bear grudges against the sisters, Omar is taunted and tormented by young and old alike. He is adopted by his teacher and falls in love with his classmate who is put in a position of shame by use of hypnosis. An astute student, he wins a scholarship to study in Karachi as the sisters conjure another offspring. After graduating as a doctor Omar becomes the son-in-law of General Hyder, a fictional portrayal of General Zia, future president of Pakistan, whose daughter becomes possessed by a demon. Future Prime Minister Harappa, a stand-in for PM Bhutto, is a wealthy playboy who studied in Britain. Their wives, Bilquis and Rani respectively, are related by marriage.
Omar is drinking buddies with Harappa and they carouse together in brothels and casinos. Interfamily conflicts and their personal slights put Hyder and Harappa at odds until revenge is taken and the stain of shame erased. Rushdie’s narrative power makes the story take on an almost mythical stature. Although the novel is mostly told in the third person there is also a mysterious narrator who interjects himself into the story, a fictionalized Rushdie who is from Bombay, spent time in Pakistan and moved to England. Rushdie was inspired by an honor killing of a girl by her father in London. He alternates between a fictitious and actual Pakistan. The story is both tragic and comic, a difficult balance to achieve.
August 17, 2021
I found this novel to be incredibly interesting and had me reflecting a lot while reading. Having studied extensively Arab/Middle Eastern/Islamic culture and being a former Arabic linguist, I enjoyed the author's story involving the characters, their cultural parameters, and their purpose. The central theme is shame: shame from within, seeing shame in the outside world, seeing shame in others, personal shame, living in shame, fear of shame, etc. The parallels of Pakistan's political climate in the late 70s-ealry 80s was satirized with close-to-fictional portrayals of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq.
This was my first Salman Rushdie novel and my initial impression was that it was confusing and disjointed. Once I got used to his style and even the narrator's breaks on the fourth wall, the story really took off. I enjoyed this book and I may read it again because I'm certain there are many little things I missed the first time.
This was my first Salman Rushdie novel and my initial impression was that it was confusing and disjointed. Once I got used to his style and even the narrator's breaks on the fourth wall, the story really took off. I enjoyed this book and I may read it again because I'm certain there are many little things I missed the first time.
October 30, 2007
I reread SHAME this weekend and was once again reminded why Rushdie is one of the greatest authors of our time. In Shame he addresses may levels but this last reading I focused on how he has intertwined the relationship of Shame throughout the levels of our human experience. He draws his characters so that there many layered motivations and convoluted histories speak to more than simply internal shame but also how actions on level produce effects that reach as broad as national politics and historical change. He makes the very clear statement that shame is not necessarily tied to innocence vs. guilt but that external factors on a person produce the monsters of human emotion that cannot be reigned in by living a moral life. The absence of shame or an attempt to seclude one's self from the world and its shame make no difference in the human arena and create the same returning responsibilities to the soul and the world.
Rushdie personifies human emotions as physical entities and yet also bridges the parallels into macro-society. His context of bring the external and internal into a single overreaching view of humanity are brilliant. It is hard not to react to such clear and lucent observations.
A quote on the subject of Shame: "... But we are discussing an abstract, an entirely ethereal vending machine; so into the ether goes the unfelt shame of the world. When I submit, it is siphoned of by the misfortunate few, janitors of the unseen, their souls buckets into which squeegees drip what was spilled. We keep such buckets in special cupboards. Nor do we think of them much, although they clean up our dirty waters.
This is one of many times when Rushdie illustrates the transference of our guilt, shame, hatred and darker moments onto those around us in an effort to survive our pride. His vending machine metaphor is actually very well developed beyond this short quote and I suggest you look it up - it is about a page and brilliants demonstrates how we take what we can - and let the rest drip into society at large to create the personality of a generation. It is a lesson on owning up and also survival.
As usual, Rushdie's characters are one of a kind, vividly drawn and scented humans. Their stories are entangled, fascinating and dark.
Please take the time to read this book, it will move you in very different directions and take you on a journey through time, confluence and generational shame.
Rushdie personifies human emotions as physical entities and yet also bridges the parallels into macro-society. His context of bring the external and internal into a single overreaching view of humanity are brilliant. It is hard not to react to such clear and lucent observations.
A quote on the subject of Shame: "... But we are discussing an abstract, an entirely ethereal vending machine; so into the ether goes the unfelt shame of the world. When I submit, it is siphoned of by the misfortunate few, janitors of the unseen, their souls buckets into which squeegees drip what was spilled. We keep such buckets in special cupboards. Nor do we think of them much, although they clean up our dirty waters.
This is one of many times when Rushdie illustrates the transference of our guilt, shame, hatred and darker moments onto those around us in an effort to survive our pride. His vending machine metaphor is actually very well developed beyond this short quote and I suggest you look it up - it is about a page and brilliants demonstrates how we take what we can - and let the rest drip into society at large to create the personality of a generation. It is a lesson on owning up and also survival.
As usual, Rushdie's characters are one of a kind, vividly drawn and scented humans. Their stories are entangled, fascinating and dark.
Please take the time to read this book, it will move you in very different directions and take you on a journey through time, confluence and generational shame.
April 6, 2024
3/5 امتیاز واقعی
چه تبلیغ و ترغیبی بهتر از اینکه این کتاب از طرف جمهوری اسلامی ایران ممنوع الانتشار است!
پارسال سایت خبری مشرق مقالهای نوشت و در آن به خواننده هشدار داده همان پروژهای که با سلمان رشدی و کتاب ضاله در ابتدای دهه شصت کلید خورد، دوباره در حال شکل گیری است. اینبار با نام الیف شفق (یا شافاک). در آن مقاله سلمان رشدی را ضد اسلام و طرفدار نظام سرمایه داری معرفی کرده. همین کتاب شرم را هم مورد عنایت قرار داده. اما اصل ماجرا چیست؟
لینک مقاله سایت مشرق
چرا باید آثار سلمان رشدی را خواند؟
توضیح لازم را مرحوم مهدی سحابی در یکی از مصاحبه هایشان گفته اند. به درج این نظر بسنده میکنم:
آیا این کتاب ضد اسلام است؟
جواب این است که شرم ضد خیلی از چیزها است. ضد مقدس مابی، زن ستیزی، خرافه و چه و چه و چه. آن چیزی که در کتاب با نام اسلام مورد انتقاد قرار داده شده را هر انسان عاقلی میداند و چیز عجیبی نیست. سیاستمداری که جای مُهر به پیشانی دارد و مدام در حال خیانت و جنایت است چندان ماهیت غریبی نیست. تا حدی که به شکل یک تیپ در داستانها در آمده. اگر اسلام این چیزهاست پس باید گفت سلمان رشدی کتابی ضد اسلام نوشته.
ماجرا
کتاب شرم هم مثل کتاب قبلی سلمان رشدی -بچههای نیمه شب- سبک ریالیسم جادوئی دارد. یک رئالیسم جادوئی-سیاسی. موضوع کتاب حول و حوش حکومت پاکستان در دهههای 70 و 80 میلادی میچرخد.
سه خواهرِ مجرد در خانهای به نام نیشابور، دور افتاده از مردم در انزوا زندگی میکنند. از این سه خواهر پسری متولد میشود (معلوم نیست کدام یک مادر اصلی است و بچه پدری هم ندارد) به نام عمر خیام. حدستان درست است: این پسر از دین و ایمان بوئی نبرده و مرد علم است. شخصیت عمر خیام در واقع یک شاهد ماجراست. یک شخصیت حاشیهای و یک ناظر اتفاقات ریز و درشت.
شخصیتهای اصلی کهاند؟
شخصیتهای اصلی داستان رضا حیدر و اسکندر هراپا هستند. یکی مهاجری مسلمان از کشور ناپاکان (هند) که بعد از انشقاق هند به کشور پاکان (پاکستان) پا گذاشته. یک افسر ارتشی معتقد و مذهبی نما.
دیگری اسکندر هراپا است. یک انسان خوشگذران و لامذهب که علاقه مند به سیاست میشود.
دیگر شخصیتهای داستان زنانِ این شخصیتها هستند که لایهی زیرین داستان را شکل میدهند.
پاکستان سلمان رشدی و موضوع زنان
کتاب مستقیما یک اثر انتقادی به وضعیت کشور مسلمان پاکستان است. شرح خیانتها، جنایتها، وعدهها، کودتاها و ظلمهاییست که با نام اسلام، یا آزادی به مردم میرود. که البته سلمان رشدی با گنجاندن برخی اتفاقات جادوئی کمی از تلخی این روایت کاسته است. زنان در داستان نقش اساسی بازی میکنند. مردان سیاست از نقش زنها غافلند اما زمانی به این نقش پی میبرند که کار از کار گذشته. تم اصلی کتاب انتقام زنان هم هست. زنانی که سرخورده اند و در پستوهای خانهها و کاخها حبس شدهاند اما هیچ کس نمیتواند آنها را تا ابد در پستو نگه دارد. روزی از کوزه بیرون میتراوند و هر آنکه نمیخواهد تر شود را خیس خواهند کرد.
ماجرای واقعی کتاب
اشارات و اتفاقات بیرونی کتاب نظر کنایه هایی است به دوران دو نخست وزیر پاکستان. ذوالفقار علی بوتو و ژنرال ضیاء الحق است. خودِ سلمان رشدی در مصاحبهای که اخیرا در پی اتفاقات ضد نژادپرستی در آمریکا شکل گرفت با او انجام شده گفت:
برای این که کتاب اسپویل نشود به شباهتهای ماجرای واقعی با شرح آورده شده در داستان نمیپردازم.
شرم/بی شرمی
در جایی از داستان سلمان رشدی کلمه معادل انگلیسیِ شرم را یارای کلمه ی محلی "شرم" نمیداند. Shame نمیتواند نشان دهد که شرم چیست. در طول داستان موضوع بی شرمی است که از در و دیوار داستان میریزد. مردی که با همسرش نمیخوابد اما هر شب از کنیز خانه ارضا میشود. دوستی که برای رسیدن به قدرت به دوست و خویش خود خیانت میکند. دامادی که برای ارتقا قدرت خود آدم فروشی میکند. خانواده هایی که از شرم فرزند دخترشان نمیتوانند سر برآرند. مبلغان مذهبی که مملو از کینه و فریب اند.
آنچه در داستان کمتر یافت میشود شرم است. که اگر میبود پاکستان اینچنین در محاصره فساد و تبانی و کودتا نبود.
قلم سلمان رشدی
سلمان رشدی را باید مارکزِ شرق دانست. آثار او از رئالیسم جادوئی آمریکای جنوبی چیزی کم ندارد که حتا به نظر من در این کتاب بچههای نیمه شب رئالیسمِ سلمان رشدی دستی روی دست مارکز گذاشته است. خلاقیت او در ایجاد موقعیتهای خاص بی نظیر است. اما شکل روایت کتاب شرم چندان جذاب نیست. راوی خودش را کامل از ماجرا دور کرده و چندان به شخصیتها نزدیک نمیشود. انگار سلمان رشدی ترسیده خواننده او را هم با مسلمانان پاکستان یکی بداند. چند جای داستان حتی پا را از داستان بیرون گذاشته و راوی از زندگی خود در انگلستان میگوید! اینطور خواننده مطمئن میشود که نویسنده الان در انگلستان زندگی میکند و ربطی به این کشور جدا شده از مادر ندارد.
خلاصه که راوی قلدر نیست و بیشتر قدرت داستان در جسارت انتقادانهاش است که بسیاری از آنها به کشور ما هم بر میخورد. و دیگری سبک رئالیسم جادوئی با المانهای شرقی.
با این حال خواندن این اثر لطف خودش را دارد.
ترجمه
ترجمه فارسی کتاب «شرم» سلمان رشدی(به قلم مهدی سحابی) در سال 66 از سوی وزارت ارشاد وقت، به عنوان کتاب سال جمهوری اسلامی در حوزه ترجمه برگزیده شد.
خلاص
چه تبلیغ و ترغیبی بهتر از اینکه این کتاب از طرف جمهوری اسلامی ایران ممنوع الانتشار است!
پارسال سایت خبری مشرق مقالهای نوشت و در آن به خواننده هشدار داده همان پروژهای که با سلمان رشدی و کتاب ضاله در ابتدای دهه شصت کلید خورد، دوباره در حال شکل گیری است. اینبار با نام الیف شفق (یا شافاک). در آن مقاله سلمان رشدی را ضد اسلام و طرفدار نظام سرمایه داری معرفی کرده. همین کتاب شرم را هم مورد عنایت قرار داده. اما اصل ماجرا چیست؟
لینک مقاله سایت مشرق
چرا باید آثار سلمان رشدی را خواند؟
توضیح لازم را مرحوم مهدی سحابی در یکی از مصاحبه هایشان گفته اند. به درج این نظر بسنده میکنم:
او درباره رمان "شرم" گفته بود که حال و هوای این رمان برای خواننده ایرانی آشناست «چرا که در لابهلای بافت کاملا غربی کتاب، عنصرهایی از این طرف دنیا و از فرهنگ خودمان» در آن دیده میشود.
سحابی "شعور تاریخی" موجود در آثار سلمان رشدی را میستود و معتقد بود که آثار این نویسنده "ناب و ماندنی" هستند: "در کمتر رمانی میشود بیانی این چنین بداهه و الهامی و در عین حال ساختاری این چنین منسجم و اندیشیده را با هم سراغ کرد."
مهدی سحابی امیدوار بود که ترجمه آثار سلمان رشدی در ایران، علاوه بر تأثیرگذاری بر خواننده ایرانی، "سرخطهایی" به نویسندگان و قصهنویسان ایرانی بدهد: "همسانی بسیاری شرایط و از طرف دیگر، موفقیت چشمگیر سلمان رشدی، به من اجازه میدهد که این امید را فقط خوشباوری ندانم."
آیا این کتاب ضد اسلام است؟
جواب این است که شرم ضد خیلی از چیزها است. ضد مقدس مابی، زن ستیزی، خرافه و چه و چه و چه. آن چیزی که در کتاب با نام اسلام مورد انتقاد قرار داده شده را هر انسان عاقلی میداند و چیز عجیبی نیست. سیاستمداری که جای مُهر به پیشانی دارد و مدام در حال خیانت و جنایت است چندان ماهیت غریبی نیست. تا حدی که به شکل یک تیپ در داستانها در آمده. اگر اسلام این چیزهاست پس باید گفت سلمان رشدی کتابی ضد اسلام نوشته.
ماجرا
کتاب شرم هم مثل کتاب قبلی سلمان رشدی -بچههای نیمه شب- سبک ریالیسم جادوئی دارد. یک رئالیسم جادوئی-سیاسی. موضوع کتاب حول و حوش حکومت پاکستان در دهههای 70 و 80 میلادی میچرخد.
سه خواهرِ مجرد در خانهای به نام نیشابور، دور افتاده از مردم در انزوا زندگی میکنند. از این سه خواهر پسری متولد میشود (معلوم نیست کدام یک مادر اصلی است و بچه پدری هم ندارد) به نام عمر خیام. حدستان درست است: این پسر از دین و ایمان بوئی نبرده و مرد علم است. شخصیت عمر خیام در واقع یک شاهد ماجراست. یک شخصیت حاشیهای و یک ناظر اتفاقات ریز و درشت.
عمر خیام گفت: برای اینکه من یک آدم حاشیهایم.در زندگی من کسان دیگری نقشهای اصلی را بازی کردهاند..... من از بیرون صحنه نگاهشان میکردم. نمیدانستم چطور باید بازی کرد..... بیرون گود مینشستم و نبرد دیگران را تماشا میکردم.
شخصیتهای اصلی کهاند؟
شخصیتهای اصلی داستان رضا حیدر و اسکندر هراپا هستند. یکی مهاجری مسلمان از کشور ناپاکان (هند) که بعد از انشقاق هند به کشور پاکان (پاکستان) پا گذاشته. یک افسر ارتشی معتقد و مذهبی نما.
دیگری اسکندر هراپا است. یک انسان خوشگذران و لامذهب که علاقه مند به سیاست میشود.
دیگر شخصیتهای داستان زنانِ این شخصیتها هستند که لایهی زیرین داستان را شکل میدهند.
پاکستان سلمان رشدی و موضوع زنان
کتاب مستقیما یک اثر انتقادی به وضعیت کشور مسلمان پاکستان است. شرح خیانتها، جنایتها، وعدهها، کودتاها و ظلمهاییست که با نام اسلام، یا آزادی به مردم میرود. که البته سلمان رشدی با گنجاندن برخی اتفاقات جادوئی کمی از تلخی این روایت کاسته است. زنان در داستان نقش اساسی بازی میکنند. مردان سیاست از نقش زنها غافلند اما زمانی به این نقش پی میبرند که کار از کار گذشته. تم اصلی کتاب انتقام زنان هم هست. زنانی که سرخورده اند و در پستوهای خانهها و کاخها حبس شدهاند اما هیچ کس نمیتواند آنها را تا ابد در پستو نگه دارد. روزی از کوزه بیرون میتراوند و هر آنکه نمیخواهد تر شود را خیس خواهند کرد.
ماجرای واقعی کتاب
اشارات و اتفاقات بیرونی کتاب نظر کنایه هایی است به دوران دو نخست وزیر پاکستان. ذوالفقار علی بوتو و ژنرال ضیاء الحق است. خودِ سلمان رشدی در مصاحبهای که اخیرا در پی اتفاقات ضد نژادپرستی در آمریکا شکل گرفت با او انجام شده گفت:
در سال ۱۹۷۷، ژنرال محمد ضیاءالحق با کودتا ذوالفقار علی بوتو را در پاکستان برکنار و دو سال بعد (۱۹۷۹) او را اعدام کرد. این فصل تاریک (از تاریخ پاکستان) الهامبخش رمان "شرم" من شد.
برای این که کتاب اسپویل نشود به شباهتهای ماجرای واقعی با شرح آورده شده در داستان نمیپردازم.
شرم/بی شرمی
در جایی از داستان سلمان رشدی کلمه معادل انگلیسیِ شرم را یارای کلمه ی محلی "شرم" نمیداند. Shame نمیتواند نشان دهد که شرم چیست. در طول داستان موضوع بی شرمی است که از در و دیوار داستان میریزد. مردی که با همسرش نمیخوابد اما هر شب از کنیز خانه ارضا میشود. دوستی که برای رسیدن به قدرت به دوست و خویش خود خیانت میکند. دامادی که برای ارتقا قدرت خود آدم فروشی میکند. خانواده هایی که از شرم فرزند دخترشان نمیتوانند سر برآرند. مبلغان مذهبی که مملو از کینه و فریب اند.
آنچه در داستان کمتر یافت میشود شرم است. که اگر میبود پاکستان اینچنین در محاصره فساد و تبانی و کودتا نبود.
قلم سلمان رشدی
سلمان رشدی را باید مارکزِ شرق دانست. آثار او از رئالیسم جادوئی آمریکای جنوبی چیزی کم ندارد که حتا به نظر من در این کتاب بچههای نیمه شب رئالیسمِ سلمان رشدی دستی روی دست مارکز گذاشته است. خلاقیت او در ایجاد موقعیتهای خاص بی نظیر است. اما شکل روایت کتاب شرم چندان جذاب نیست. راوی خودش را کامل از ماجرا دور کرده و چندان به شخصیتها نزدیک نمیشود. انگار سلمان رشدی ترسیده خواننده او را هم با مسلمانان پاکستان یکی بداند. چند جای داستان حتی پا را از داستان بیرون گذاشته و راوی از زندگی خود در انگلستان میگوید! اینطور خواننده مطمئن میشود که نویسنده الان در انگلستان زندگی میکند و ربطی به این کشور جدا شده از مادر ندارد.
خلاصه که راوی قلدر نیست و بیشتر قدرت داستان در جسارت انتقادانهاش است که بسیاری از آنها به کشور ما هم بر میخورد. و دیگری سبک رئالیسم جادوئی با المانهای شرقی.
با این حال خواندن این اثر لطف خودش را دارد.
ترجمه
ترجمه فارسی کتاب «شرم» سلمان رشدی(به قلم مهدی سحابی) در سال 66 از سوی وزارت ارشاد وقت، به عنوان کتاب سال جمهوری اسلامی در حوزه ترجمه برگزیده شد.
خلاص
April 11, 2022
امتیاز کتاب که قطعاً 5 هستش، اما فعلاً چهار میدهم تا بعداً آن را در نسبت با کتابهای دیگرِ رشدی بسنجم.
1. بالاخره این رئالیسم جادویی چیه؟
فکر کنم بهترین راه برای پاسخ دادن به این سوال، برشمردن ویژگیهای عمدهی رئالیسم جادویی باشد:
الف. نویسندههایی که در رئالیسم جادویی قلم میزنند، در مناطق حاشیهای جهان و کمتر توسعهیافته زندگی میکنند. چون هنوز کرم خِردگرايی به جان این مناطق نیفتاده است، مردم آن (نسبت به ساکنین جوامع مدرن)، تلقی دگرگونهای از رئاليته و جهان واقعیت دارند (که این تلقی، خود را در داستانها و باورهای عامه منطقه متبلور میسازد).
بنابراین این نویسنده نیز برای ساختن رئاليتهی شخصی خودش، از عناصر خیالانگیز (عناصری که از دلِ داستانهای عامه، افسانهها و خوابها بیرون میآیند) در کنار منطق این جهانی بهره میبرد.... البته باید توجه داشت که نویسنده با این عناصر خیالانگیز خودارضائی نمیکند و آنها جنبهی قومپرستی و ناسیونالیستی و جتی تفننی برایش ندارند، بلکه رویکردی کاملاً مدرن نسبت به آنها دارد.
ب. روایات تاریخی را عمدتاً جهان استعماری و در درجهی بعدی، حاکمانِ اکنون به قدرت رسیدهی مناطق حاشیهای (اکنون پسااستعماری) مینویسند.
اما نویسندهای که در رئالیسم جادویی قلم میزند، نه تنها در درستیِ این روایتِ مسلط تاريخی تشکیک میکند، بلکه تلاش مینماید تا در رئاليتهی شخصی و ثانویهی خود، روایتِ تاریخیِ ثانویه/شخصی/بومیتری خلق کند و حتی در این مسیر، از بازخلقِ جغرافیایی ثانویه و ديگرگون هم ابایی ندارد:
کشوری که این داستان در آن میگذرد پاکستان نیست، یا بهتر است گفته شود هم هست و هم نیست. داستان من، کشور خیالی من، بفهمی نفهمی با واقعیت تفاوت دارد. خودم فکر میکنم که فقط دربارهی پاکستان نمینویسم. [ص30]
بنابراین روایت او، روایتی پسااستعماری است که تلاش میکند تا از طریق روایتِ ثانویهی خود، روایتی آلترناتيو و به زعم خود، اصیلتر از روایتِ رسمیِ استعماری ارائه بدهد؛ روایتی با منطقی درونی مختص به خودش. اما راوی با بازیگوشی حتی در روایت خودش هم تشکیک میکند:
تکذیب یا تأیید این داستان احمقانه از من ساخته نیست. [ص12]
و دقیقاً در جایی که نویسنده امکانِ روایتی دگرگونهای از تاریخ را ممکن ساخته است، با هوشمندی روایت و حتی نقشآفرینیِ آن را به زنان (این جنسِ عموماً مغفول مانده در تاریخ) میسپارد:
به نظر میرسد که زنها به قصه چیره شدهاند؛ از حاشیهی داستان به مرکز آن یورش آوردهاند و میخواهند که غصهها و شادیهای سرگذشت آنها هم در داستان گنجانده شود، و مجبورم میکنند که رویدادهای قصهی مردانهام را تنها به صورت بازتابی در آینهای زنانه ببینم. [ص 209]
2. هندوستان: جهان دو تکه شده.
خب، حالا ببینیم هندوستان در زمانهای که رشدی روایتش میکند، چه شرایطی داشته است.
هر نویسندهی هندیای که بخواهد کمی به داستان خود عمق تاریخی بدهد، قطعاً به تاریخ مفصل و طولانی استعماری این کشور و سپس استقلال آن مفصلاً بپردازد؛ سلمان رشدی نیز به عنوان نویسندهای پسااستعماری، در ابتدای داستانش توجه ویژهای به این دوره از حیات هندوستان بزرگ دارد.
اما از آن مهمتر، سلمان رشدی در ادامهی سیر منطقی داستانش، تأکید بسیار بسیار زیادتری بر تجزیهی هندوستان بزرگ و پیدایش پاکستان دارد. و در واقع زخم بزرگ این واقعه، بر بسیاری از نمادگراییها و تصویرسازیهای کتابش تأثیر گذاشته و آنها را بر همین دوگانگیِ تاریخی استوار کرده است؛ دوگانگیای که به وضوح ميتوان ردی آن را همچون یک زخم، در آثار نویسندگان هندوستانی و پاکستانی دنبال کرد.
رشدی در ادامه، داستان را کاملاً بر پاکستان و اتفاقات سیاسی-اجتماعی آن متمرکز میکند و چقدر خوب و بدون دستانداز، امرِ سیاست را با عناصر خیالانگیز در هم میآمیزد (کاری که آلنده در «خانه اشباح» از پسش بر نمیآید و نمیتواند تعادلی بین آنها برقرار کند). و او سپس به جدایی بنگلادش میپردازد، و اینجاست که معنای نمادگرایی آن سه خواهرِ عزلتنشینِ ساکن در نیشابور سرانجام برای منِ مخاطب آشکار میشود.
چیزی که در روایت سلمان رشدی برایم جالب و شگفتانگیز بود، این بود که او به وضوح دارد به زندگی شخصی و سياسي رهبران سیاسی پاکستان (بوتو و ژنرال ضياءالحق) میپردازد، اما چنان سرگذشت آنها را با خرده پیرنگهای عجیب و غریب و پر جزئیات و نیز با عناصر جادویی در هم میآمیزد، که واقعاً مخاطب جرات نمیداند که آن ها را تا کجا باید زاییدهی نویسنده بداند و از کجا به بعد واقعیت آغاز میگردد (البته اگر بتوان از «واقعیت» بعنوان چیزی متعین حرف زد).
3. فرزندِ شهرزاد:
سلمان رشدی علاوه بر اینکه با مهارت و کاملاً مهندسی شده، روایت پازلگونهی خود را پیش میبرد و قدرت داستانگويی شرقی خود را به رخ مخاطب میکشد، به شدت در شخصیتپردازیهایش موفق عمل میکند؛ در ابتدا هر شخصیتی که وارد داستان میشود، به وضوح به یک تيپ میماند (که البته این اصلاً بد هم نيست)، اما آنها را چنان در طول و عرضِ داستان به این طرف و آن طرف میبَرند و راوی چنان جزئیات شخصیتشان و انگیزههای اعمالشان را به تصویر میکشد، که آنها دیگر به انسانی واقعی میمانند.
مثلاً روايات تاریخی، تصویر و کارنامهای به وضوح کلیشهای و تیپیکال از بوتو و ضياءالحق ترسیم میکنند؛ اما آن تصویری که رشدی از این دو ارائه میدهد، تصویری کاملاً انسانیتر (با همهی پیچیدگیهایش) از شخصیتهای تاریخی است
4. رشدی روشنفکر:
در کنار اینها، سلمان رشدی در قامت یک روشنفکر نیز ظاهر میشود؛ او همچون یک روانشناس اجتماعی و مورخ، هندوستان و پاکستان و ضمیر جمعی جامعهی این دو را زیر ذرهبینِ نافذ خود قرار میدهد و تلاش میکند تا هر کدام از وقایع سیاسی و اجتماعیِ شبه جزیره را از منظری انسانی تبارشناسی کند.
اوج کار او، پرداختنش به موضوع "شرم" در طول کتاب میباشد؛ مضمونی که اگرچه در ابتدای کتاب، به نظر چندان اهمیتی ندارد و چیزی اضافیست، اما کمکم خود به شخصیتی اصلی در داستان تبدیل میشود، و به وضوح دلایل بسیاری از رفتارهای شخصیتهای اصلی و حتی مردمان پاکستان را توضیح میدهد.
علاوه بر این، کتاب به مضامینی مانند طغیان و شورش (در ادامه همان مضمون شرم)، مهاجرت، عزلت نشینی، جنون، دوپارگی هویت و در حاشيهبودگی نیز پرداخته است.
5. من و رشدی، فرزندان شرق:
متأسفانه ما خوانندگان ایرانی تا درجهی زیادی از يوروفيلی رنج میبریم و گاهاً حاضریم به نویسندگانی درجه و سه از اروپا پناه ببریم، اما گوشه چشمی هم به نویسندگان، روشنفکران و هنرمندان منطقهی خودمان نیندازیم... و حتی خیلی از آنها را نمیشناسیم. نویسندگانی که دقیقاً با همین زیست روزمره و شرایط سیاسی و فرهنگی ما سر و کله میزنند و راحتتر میتوان فهميدشان/ ما را میفهمند.
پیش خودم میگویم که برای آخرین بار [دارم] دربارهی شرق مینویسم، دربارهی جایی که از چند سال پیش رفته رفته از آن جدا شدهام. اما هنوز من به این بخش از جهان وابستهام، حتی اگر پیوندم شل و سفت باشد. [ص 29]
سلمان رشدی هم به وضوح مسائل سیاسی و فرهنگی و اقتصادیای را مطرح میکند که آن زمان یا الان، کشور خودمان هم بدان مبتلا است (و بیان آنها در درون مرزهای گوهربارمان، تابو و مشمول سانسور است، یا اینکه از چشمان نویسندگان ما به دور ماندهاند).
علاوه بر این، رشدی در این کتاب همچون غولی پر ابهت ظاهر میشود تا همهی خواندهها و تجربیات و دانستههای ادبی منِ خواننده را به مبارزه بطلبد، و من را با قلمِ تند و داستانگوی خود، بُزکش تا انتهای کتاب با خود ببرد.
1. بالاخره این رئالیسم جادویی چیه؟
فکر کنم بهترین راه برای پاسخ دادن به این سوال، برشمردن ویژگیهای عمدهی رئالیسم جادویی باشد:
الف. نویسندههایی که در رئالیسم جادویی قلم میزنند، در مناطق حاشیهای جهان و کمتر توسعهیافته زندگی میکنند. چون هنوز کرم خِردگرايی به جان این مناطق نیفتاده است، مردم آن (نسبت به ساکنین جوامع مدرن)، تلقی دگرگونهای از رئاليته و جهان واقعیت دارند (که این تلقی، خود را در داستانها و باورهای عامه منطقه متبلور میسازد).
بنابراین این نویسنده نیز برای ساختن رئاليتهی شخصی خودش، از عناصر خیالانگیز (عناصری که از دلِ داستانهای عامه، افسانهها و خوابها بیرون میآیند) در کنار منطق این جهانی بهره میبرد.... البته باید توجه داشت که نویسنده با این عناصر خیالانگیز خودارضائی نمیکند و آنها جنبهی قومپرستی و ناسیونالیستی و جتی تفننی برایش ندارند، بلکه رویکردی کاملاً مدرن نسبت به آنها دارد.
ب. روایات تاریخی را عمدتاً جهان استعماری و در درجهی بعدی، حاکمانِ اکنون به قدرت رسیدهی مناطق حاشیهای (اکنون پسااستعماری) مینویسند.
اما نویسندهای که در رئالیسم جادویی قلم میزند، نه تنها در درستیِ این روایتِ مسلط تاريخی تشکیک میکند، بلکه تلاش مینماید تا در رئاليتهی شخصی و ثانویهی خود، روایتِ تاریخیِ ثانویه/شخصی/بومیتری خلق کند و حتی در این مسیر، از بازخلقِ جغرافیایی ثانویه و ديگرگون هم ابایی ندارد:
کشوری که این داستان در آن میگذرد پاکستان نیست، یا بهتر است گفته شود هم هست و هم نیست. داستان من، کشور خیالی من، بفهمی نفهمی با واقعیت تفاوت دارد. خودم فکر میکنم که فقط دربارهی پاکستان نمینویسم. [ص30]
بنابراین روایت او، روایتی پسااستعماری است که تلاش میکند تا از طریق روایتِ ثانویهی خود، روایتی آلترناتيو و به زعم خود، اصیلتر از روایتِ رسمیِ استعماری ارائه بدهد؛ روایتی با منطقی درونی مختص به خودش. اما راوی با بازیگوشی حتی در روایت خودش هم تشکیک میکند:
تکذیب یا تأیید این داستان احمقانه از من ساخته نیست. [ص12]
و دقیقاً در جایی که نویسنده امکانِ روایتی دگرگونهای از تاریخ را ممکن ساخته است، با هوشمندی روایت و حتی نقشآفرینیِ آن را به زنان (این جنسِ عموماً مغفول مانده در تاریخ) میسپارد:
به نظر میرسد که زنها به قصه چیره شدهاند؛ از حاشیهی داستان به مرکز آن یورش آوردهاند و میخواهند که غصهها و شادیهای سرگذشت آنها هم در داستان گنجانده شود، و مجبورم میکنند که رویدادهای قصهی مردانهام را تنها به صورت بازتابی در آینهای زنانه ببینم. [ص 209]
2. هندوستان: جهان دو تکه شده.
خب، حالا ببینیم هندوستان در زمانهای که رشدی روایتش میکند، چه شرایطی داشته است.
هر نویسندهی هندیای که بخواهد کمی به داستان خود عمق تاریخی بدهد، قطعاً به تاریخ مفصل و طولانی استعماری این کشور و سپس استقلال آن مفصلاً بپردازد؛ سلمان رشدی نیز به عنوان نویسندهای پسااستعماری، در ابتدای داستانش توجه ویژهای به این دوره از حیات هندوستان بزرگ دارد.
اما از آن مهمتر، سلمان رشدی در ادامهی سیر منطقی داستانش، تأکید بسیار بسیار زیادتری بر تجزیهی هندوستان بزرگ و پیدایش پاکستان دارد. و در واقع زخم بزرگ این واقعه، بر بسیاری از نمادگراییها و تصویرسازیهای کتابش تأثیر گذاشته و آنها را بر همین دوگانگیِ تاریخی استوار کرده است؛ دوگانگیای که به وضوح ميتوان ردی آن را همچون یک زخم، در آثار نویسندگان هندوستانی و پاکستانی دنبال کرد.
رشدی در ادامه، داستان را کاملاً بر پاکستان و اتفاقات سیاسی-اجتماعی آن متمرکز میکند و چقدر خوب و بدون دستانداز، امرِ سیاست را با عناصر خیالانگیز در هم میآمیزد (کاری که آلنده در «خانه اشباح» از پسش بر نمیآید و نمیتواند تعادلی بین آنها برقرار کند). و او سپس به جدایی بنگلادش میپردازد، و اینجاست که معنای نمادگرایی آن سه خواهرِ عزلتنشینِ ساکن در نیشابور سرانجام برای منِ مخاطب آشکار میشود.
چیزی که در روایت سلمان رشدی برایم جالب و شگفتانگیز بود، این بود که او به وضوح دارد به زندگی شخصی و سياسي رهبران سیاسی پاکستان (بوتو و ژنرال ضياءالحق) میپردازد، اما چنان سرگذشت آنها را با خرده پیرنگهای عجیب و غریب و پر جزئیات و نیز با عناصر جادویی در هم میآمیزد، که واقعاً مخاطب جرات نمیداند که آن ها را تا کجا باید زاییدهی نویسنده بداند و از کجا به بعد واقعیت آغاز میگردد (البته اگر بتوان از «واقعیت» بعنوان چیزی متعین حرف زد).
3. فرزندِ شهرزاد:
سلمان رشدی علاوه بر اینکه با مهارت و کاملاً مهندسی شده، روایت پازلگونهی خود را پیش میبرد و قدرت داستانگويی شرقی خود را به رخ مخاطب میکشد، به شدت در شخصیتپردازیهایش موفق عمل میکند؛ در ابتدا هر شخصیتی که وارد داستان میشود، به وضوح به یک تيپ میماند (که البته این اصلاً بد هم نيست)، اما آنها را چنان در طول و عرضِ داستان به این طرف و آن طرف میبَرند و راوی چنان جزئیات شخصیتشان و انگیزههای اعمالشان را به تصویر میکشد، که آنها دیگر به انسانی واقعی میمانند.
مثلاً روايات تاریخی، تصویر و کارنامهای به وضوح کلیشهای و تیپیکال از بوتو و ضياءالحق ترسیم میکنند؛ اما آن تصویری که رشدی از این دو ارائه میدهد، تصویری کاملاً انسانیتر (با همهی پیچیدگیهایش) از شخصیتهای تاریخی است
4. رشدی روشنفکر:
در کنار اینها، سلمان رشدی در قامت یک روشنفکر نیز ظاهر میشود؛ او همچون یک روانشناس اجتماعی و مورخ، هندوستان و پاکستان و ضمیر جمعی جامعهی این دو را زیر ذرهبینِ نافذ خود قرار میدهد و تلاش میکند تا هر کدام از وقایع سیاسی و اجتماعیِ شبه جزیره را از منظری انسانی تبارشناسی کند.
اوج کار او، پرداختنش به موضوع "شرم" در طول کتاب میباشد؛ مضمونی که اگرچه در ابتدای کتاب، به نظر چندان اهمیتی ندارد و چیزی اضافیست، اما کمکم خود به شخصیتی اصلی در داستان تبدیل میشود، و به وضوح دلایل بسیاری از رفتارهای شخصیتهای اصلی و حتی مردمان پاکستان را توضیح میدهد.
علاوه بر این، کتاب به مضامینی مانند طغیان و شورش (در ادامه همان مضمون شرم)، مهاجرت، عزلت نشینی، جنون، دوپارگی هویت و در حاشيهبودگی نیز پرداخته است.
5. من و رشدی، فرزندان شرق:
متأسفانه ما خوانندگان ایرانی تا درجهی زیادی از يوروفيلی رنج میبریم و گاهاً حاضریم به نویسندگانی درجه و سه از اروپا پناه ببریم، اما گوشه چشمی هم به نویسندگان، روشنفکران و هنرمندان منطقهی خودمان نیندازیم... و حتی خیلی از آنها را نمیشناسیم. نویسندگانی که دقیقاً با همین زیست روزمره و شرایط سیاسی و فرهنگی ما سر و کله میزنند و راحتتر میتوان فهميدشان/ ما را میفهمند.
پیش خودم میگویم که برای آخرین بار [دارم] دربارهی شرق مینویسم، دربارهی جایی که از چند سال پیش رفته رفته از آن جدا شدهام. اما هنوز من به این بخش از جهان وابستهام، حتی اگر پیوندم شل و سفت باشد. [ص 29]
سلمان رشدی هم به وضوح مسائل سیاسی و فرهنگی و اقتصادیای را مطرح میکند که آن زمان یا الان، کشور خودمان هم بدان مبتلا است (و بیان آنها در درون مرزهای گوهربارمان، تابو و مشمول سانسور است، یا اینکه از چشمان نویسندگان ما به دور ماندهاند).
علاوه بر این، رشدی در این کتاب همچون غولی پر ابهت ظاهر میشود تا همهی خواندهها و تجربیات و دانستههای ادبی منِ خواننده را به مبارزه بطلبد، و من را با قلمِ تند و داستانگوی خود، بُزکش تا انتهای کتاب با خود ببرد.
November 19, 2017
The overcaffeinated narrator of this exasperating novel brought me to the point where the obvious linguistic dexterity, the crazily exuberant frolic in words and wordplay taking place—normally characteristics that earn my instant devotion—made dragging myself through another page a masochistic exercise. Too entertaining and amusing to abandon for the most part, the novel teased me past the point of no escape (200pp or so), and with each manic, madcap précis of the thousand events taking place in every paragraph, the comically cardboarded revue of characters, the knowing and smug narrator, and the bustling density of the ideas on show, and the writer’s flamboyant flaunting of his style, my hands began clenching the page corners as though squeezing my digits round Salman’s neck. Some of the above were admirable qualities, and for the most part I coasted along on the comedic brio and swagger of the thing. In the end, I was slain. For shame.
July 1, 2015
القراءة لسلمان رشدي تهمة جزافية , فكل من يرى كتبه عندي يربط لاإراديًا بين الاسم وجريمته المزعومة آيات شيطانية (والتي لم أقرأها بعد) , بداية من الأصدقاء حتى أبي , الملتزم دينيًا الذي ما إن رأى أعمال لرشدي ضمن مكتبتي حتى استفسر قائلًا : أليس هذا صاحب آيات شيطانية ؟ فقلت له : نعم ولكني لم أقتنيها . فاكتفى بنظرة امتعاض و رفض .
المهم : أنا بحب أسلوب سلمان رشدي , الأسلوب المعقد البسيط في آن واحد , الخلط المبهر بين الواقع والخيال , بين الحلم والحقيقة , ذلك المزيج المبهر الذي يضمن لك متعة أدبية رائعة , متعة لا تجدها إلا عند الأدباء رفيعي الطراز .
هذا العمل امتداد مبهر لرائعة سلمان (أطفال منتصف الليل) والتي احتلت مكانة عظيمة داخل مخيلتي الأدبية , في عمليه تشعر أنك أمام وطني مهموم بقضايا وطنه الأم , فيه تجد الهند وباكستان وبنجلاديش معروضين أمامك بلا أي زينة.
العار : تلك اللفظة العالمية ذات المعنى المقزز , العار : الشعور الأسوأ على الاطلاق , شعور الخيبة والاشمئزاز من النفس والمجتمع , الشعور العالمي الذي لا يفرق بين لغة او جنسية أو حتى دين , فكلهم في البلاء سواء , وكلهم يعانون عار ما , ومن نوع ما .
العمل منسوج باحترافية عالية للغاية , عمل مطرز بجمال من نوع خاص , ذلك الجمال الأدبي الذي يستحق أن يُخلد.
ببساطة مطلقة : هو عمل عن الدين , وعن الثقافة , وعن المجتمعات المتخلفة , هو عمل عن السياسة وعن الديكتاتورية في بلاد العالم الثالث , عمل عن العادات التي تشبه العاهات , وعن التقاليد التي تقيد البشر و تحدد حريتهم .
العمل يبدأ بداية نارية : من قصر مهيب في بلدة حدودية , قصر يشبه قصور الحكايات الخيالية , حدث فيه نوع من العار , ألزم ساكنيه العزلة التامة , ومعنى العزلة التامة هي العزلة التامة , فلا خروج لأحد حتى للخدم, ولا دخول لأحد حتى لطبيب أو لحانوتي , وتدبروا أمر مؤنتهم بسلسلة من الاجراءات المعقدة الغريبة ولكن الفعّألة في نفس الوقت ,
يقطن في هذا القصر 3 أخوات غريبات معقدات , أثرت تربيتهم الصارمة على نهج حياتهم فما أن شعروا بنوع من الحرية حتى أساءوا استخدامها , وكانت نتيجة هذا السوء : عارهم الخاص , والذي كان عبارة عن طفل ابن زنى , وهذا ما دفعهم بعيدًا عن الناس والبشر , وعن المجتمع ومؤسساته .
الطفل : عمر الخيام شاكيل , كان محور القصة وبطلها , لا لعظمة شخصيته وقوته , ولا للأحداث العظيمة المرتبطة به , بل لهامشيته اللانهائية , بطولة عمر تأتي من أنه نكرة , نكرة تامة , لا تعني الاهتمام لشئ ولا تهتم بشئ , طبيب متلصص , فقط , يتأمل ما حوله ويطلق قذائفه الكلامية التي غالبا ما تسبب كارثة .
العمل خلط بين الواقع والفانتازيا بطريقة ساحرة , دمج بين الأسماء الحقيقية وشخصيات الرواية بل و بتدخلمن الكاتب نفسه , نتج هذا العمل الغريب المبهر .
تاريخ , سياسة , دين , جنس , عادات , تقاليد , كلها مشاعر قد تحدث عار ما , وهذا ما استغله الكاتب أفضل استغلال .
شخصيات الكاتب مقدمة بتفاصيل كاملة , شخصيات حيّة كاملة , كاملة بصفاتها الرئيسة وصفاتها الثانوية , فأتت بصيغة أدبية كاملة .
الاحداث : معقدة بطريقة محببة للنفس , الكاتب يجيد استخدام أزمنة كتابته , فيقدم الحدث ويأخره , ويجلب الماضي أو المستقبل أولا , لا يفرق معه في شئ , طالما ممسك ببداية خيط روايته وأحداثها .
الترجمة كانت جيدة كافية للغاية لتدلل على عظمة النص الانجليزي .
وكالعادة : يظهر جليًا خلفية الكاتب الاسلامية ودرايته بمختلف العقائد الأخرى .
في المجمل : عمل جيد للغاية .
March 26, 2023
“Between shame and shamelessness lies the axis upon which we turn; meteorological conditions at both these poles are of the most extreme, ferocious type. Shamelessness, shame: the roots of violence.”Brilliant. Just brilliant. In this surreal parable, Rushdie makes a compelling case that shame is the perhaps the most important—and overlooked—influence on public and private life. Shame is the “paltry” translation of the Arabic sharam, which protagonist Omar Khayyam Shakil’s three mothers “forbade [him] to feel, but also embarrassment, discomfiture, decency, modesty, shyness, the sense of having an ordained place in the world, and other dialects of emotion for which English has no counterparts.” Shame has its role in each of these.
Reading Shame is like peeling an abstract onion. At its most obvious, Shame is a farcical tale about Pakistani macro-politics from the period of partition from India to the early 1980s. It is buttressed by occasional musings by the “author” about actual political events, linking the story with the real world. A deeper knowledge of Pakistani history certainly would illuminate many details; not having it does not detract from the novel in any way. (For those who want a synopsis of the plot, the New York Times review provides a good overview.)
Rushdie’s characters are trapped by tradition, greed, power, and gossip, which “is like water” and “probes surfaces for their weak places, until it finds the breakthrough point.” His narrative “must reconcile [itself] to the inevitability of the missing bits” but we can fill them in as we read along. A teacher disgraces himself by accepting paternity for a pregnancy he did not cause. A woman jilts her fiancé only to marry a man whose insatiable need to procreate leads to the birth of 27 children in six years. An executed dictator’s voice haunts the ear of his successor as his widow, who obsessively creates embroidered shawls, echoing Madame Defarge, to create a Bayeux Tapestry-like historical record about her family and nation.
It’s not all serious, though. Rushdie sprinkles his tale with raucous, biting humor. In a land dominated by vegetarians, he notes how the most popular cinema films are “non-vegetarian Westerns in which cows got massacred and the good guys feasted on steaks.” When the virgin Ironpants, the beautiful daughter of a dictator, who has no interest in carnal pleasures, accompanies her father to diplomatic receptions, “elderly ambassadors were found clutching their groins and throwing up in a toilet after their groping hands had been answered by a well-aimed knee.” Even when she was sent to an all-girl school, her classmates were mesmerizingly captivated to commit hilarious deeds. As another daughter of a military leader annuls her arranged engagement because she falls in love with another, “all hell broke loose, because love was the last thing anyone had been expecting to foul up the arrangements.”
But Rushdie’s creation of Sufiya Zinobia Hyder—who shames her parents because her birth breaks a family tradition of male progeny, after her older brother, the last male of the line, is strangled by his umbilical cords in the womb, whose mental impairment deepens her family’s shame, whose marriage to Omar Kayyam Shakil only confirms her as “the incarnation of shame” as she transforms into the Beast of shame—ultimately confirms his genius in Shame. Shame is the key to understand not only Pakistan, but indeed, humanity.
As I thought about history, is it not true that shame, perceived or real, is fundamental to understanding all wars and conflicts? For example, didn’t the shame of Versailles plant the seeds for Nazism and WWII? Didn’t the shame of the American presence in the Arab peninsula spark the events of September 11? Wasn’t the shame of the feared Domino Theory the ultimate reason for American involvement in Vietnam? It has been argued that President Obama’s shaming of Donald Trump at a White House Correspondents Dinner fueled his motivation to run for the presidency. And how about the decisions we make in our personal lives, both fundamental and petty? How many times have we been motivated to act because of what others think or what we think others might be thinking about us? And could shame be the source of denial of things we either cannot or refuse to explain? As Rushdie wrote, “It is the will to ignorance, the iron folly with which we excise from consciousness whatever consciousness cannot bear.” Can we bear to give shame its due as it shapes our lives, whether we admit it or not? Or is it a beast that we cannot escape, try as we might?
March 6, 2021
3.5 stars
December 1, 2016
This was Rushdie's third novel which was an interesting story about violence and shame that brought me in contact for the first time with concepts of Sufism and the poetry of Omar Khayyam. It was as always well-written and easy to read and shows Rushdie's powers of narration growing in power and confidence.
September 11, 2016
"It was once explained to me by one of the world's Greatest Living Poets we mere prose scribblers must turn to poets for wisdom, which is why this book is littered with them."
"The epicure against the puritan is, the book tells us, the true dialectic of history. Forget left-right,capitalism-socialism,black-white. Virtue versus vice, ascetic versus bawd, in the Fifteenth Century ?God against the Devil: that's the game."
I Loved Loved Loved it till infinity. Soon I'll give a re-reading to it again.
I loved the way it had depicted the political vibes of Pakistan during 70's and 80's. I loved Virgin Ironpants and it loose resemblance with Benezir Butto. Iskander Harrapa and Shakil, and darkness blended with Shame of the life. Love, wait, revenge, betrayal, memory, history and the last one, anyone guess ? Shame associated with all ...
"Imagine shame as a liquid, let's say a sweet fizzy tooth-rotting drink, stored in a vending machine. Push the right button and a cup plops down under a pissing stream of the fluid. How to push the button? Nothing to it. Tell a lie, sleep with a white boy, get born the wrong sex. Out flows the bubbling emotion and you drink your fill . . . but how many human beings refuse to follow
these simple instructions! Shameful things are done: lies, loose living, disrespect for one's elders, failure to love one's national flag, incorrect voting at elections, over-eating, extramarital sex, autobiographical novels, cheating at cards, maltreatment of womenfolk, examination failures, smuggling, throwing one's wicket away at the crucial point of a Test Match: and they
are done shamelessly. Then what happens to all that unfelt shame?"
I think Sir Salman Rushdie has Ocean of stories within him and a knack perfectly crafted to dissolve the story in its reader's blood.
This book was as good as 'The Satanic Verses' and 'The midnight's children'. Giving it less than 5 is shame.
"The epicure against the puritan is, the book tells us, the true dialectic of history. Forget left-right,capitalism-socialism,black-white. Virtue versus vice, ascetic versus bawd, in the Fifteenth Century ?God against the Devil: that's the game."
I Loved Loved Loved it till infinity. Soon I'll give a re-reading to it again.
I loved the way it had depicted the political vibes of Pakistan during 70's and 80's. I loved Virgin Ironpants and it loose resemblance with Benezir Butto. Iskander Harrapa and Shakil, and darkness blended with Shame of the life. Love, wait, revenge, betrayal, memory, history and the last one, anyone guess ? Shame associated with all ...
"Imagine shame as a liquid, let's say a sweet fizzy tooth-rotting drink, stored in a vending machine. Push the right button and a cup plops down under a pissing stream of the fluid. How to push the button? Nothing to it. Tell a lie, sleep with a white boy, get born the wrong sex. Out flows the bubbling emotion and you drink your fill . . . but how many human beings refuse to follow
these simple instructions! Shameful things are done: lies, loose living, disrespect for one's elders, failure to love one's national flag, incorrect voting at elections, over-eating, extramarital sex, autobiographical novels, cheating at cards, maltreatment of womenfolk, examination failures, smuggling, throwing one's wicket away at the crucial point of a Test Match: and they
are done shamelessly. Then what happens to all that unfelt shame?"
I think Sir Salman Rushdie has Ocean of stories within him and a knack perfectly crafted to dissolve the story in its reader's blood.
This book was as good as 'The Satanic Verses' and 'The midnight's children'. Giving it less than 5 is shame.
December 6, 2015
Dear Sir Rushdie
Shame is an excellent satire written in your plainspoken magic realism prose, which has left me awestruck. It is astounding how perfectly you lamented the political state of affairs in Pakistan with that of unrest of hypothetical country Q. The chronicle of the shift in political powers and musings on deeper realms of human mind weaved together by an exotic language yet a quality prose is much appreciated.
Authors would like to write a gripping story for masses, you write for your own audience; the ones interested in taking a pause, willing to enter a world of abstraction, introspect and silently thank you later for those moments of felt proximity to lost fragments of consciousness. So, may I call you a narcissistic author, who writes for applause? The surreal characters, magic realism and black humor give a passage to escape from the unbearable encounters with decaying minds, lost souls or over intellectualized escapists. Your words make the reader believe in the implausible. I believe in the power of imagination that you force the reader to indulge in, for imagination breeds hope. It is for the same reason, which makes people read Harry Porter, Hunger Games and the likes. Your writing, however, is demanding which can be overwhelming at times.
The examination of ‘Shame’ through rhetoric within the social and personal contexts is excellent. The only reason I gave this book a three star rating is because the account of Pakistan politics is a bygone and it is I who cannot relate to it… blame it on my late arrival in this world.
The three stars are exclusively for those delightful sections that probed me to have intimate conversations with my-‘self’.
Sincerely
PS
Shame is an excellent satire written in your plainspoken magic realism prose, which has left me awestruck. It is astounding how perfectly you lamented the political state of affairs in Pakistan with that of unrest of hypothetical country Q. The chronicle of the shift in political powers and musings on deeper realms of human mind weaved together by an exotic language yet a quality prose is much appreciated.
Authors would like to write a gripping story for masses, you write for your own audience; the ones interested in taking a pause, willing to enter a world of abstraction, introspect and silently thank you later for those moments of felt proximity to lost fragments of consciousness. So, may I call you a narcissistic author, who writes for applause? The surreal characters, magic realism and black humor give a passage to escape from the unbearable encounters with decaying minds, lost souls or over intellectualized escapists. Your words make the reader believe in the implausible. I believe in the power of imagination that you force the reader to indulge in, for imagination breeds hope. It is for the same reason, which makes people read Harry Porter, Hunger Games and the likes. Your writing, however, is demanding which can be overwhelming at times.
The examination of ‘Shame’ through rhetoric within the social and personal contexts is excellent. The only reason I gave this book a three star rating is because the account of Pakistan politics is a bygone and it is I who cannot relate to it… blame it on my late arrival in this world.
The three stars are exclusively for those delightful sections that probed me to have intimate conversations with my-‘self’.
Sincerely
PS
April 29, 2008
Although I always list Rushdie as one of my favorite authors of all time, it had been almost ten years since I picked up one of his books. So when I came across Shame in 12th Street books, I decided to dive back in.
I loved the way that the story kept leaping ahead of itself, rushing ahead like an impatient child to tell you things that wouldn’t happen until much later, and when they did happen how different they were from the expectations that had been seeded. The narrator of Shame, like many of Rushdie’s narrators is not only unreliable, he is perfectly honest and upfront about his unreliability, even encouraging you to doubt him at times. The effect is to feel yourself lifted up by the lapels and dragged forcefully into the strange world Rushdie weaves (a Pakistan that is at a “slight angle to reality”) and the bizarre story that enfolds within it.
I loved the way that the story kept leaping ahead of itself, rushing ahead like an impatient child to tell you things that wouldn’t happen until much later, and when they did happen how different they were from the expectations that had been seeded. The narrator of Shame, like many of Rushdie’s narrators is not only unreliable, he is perfectly honest and upfront about his unreliability, even encouraging you to doubt him at times. The effect is to feel yourself lifted up by the lapels and dragged forcefully into the strange world Rushdie weaves (a Pakistan that is at a “slight angle to reality”) and the bizarre story that enfolds within it.
September 29, 2015
A wonderful book! I can see why so many people like Salman Rushdie. (I can also see why religious types may become offended.)
Mr. Rushdie has a wonderful style. He really makes you feel like you are in Pakistan. That women and men there are really like this. His descriptions of the machinations of government and the women behind the men is absorbing.
In many ways, he reminds me of the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Can't wait to read my next Rushdie novel!
Mr. Rushdie has a wonderful style. He really makes you feel like you are in Pakistan. That women and men there are really like this. His descriptions of the machinations of government and the women behind the men is absorbing.
In many ways, he reminds me of the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Can't wait to read my next Rushdie novel!
May 5, 2018
This book is like middle child in the family which has been underrated and overshadowed by the stardom of its most popular elder sibling Midnight's Children and most controversial younger sibling The Satanic Verses. However, kudos to Mr. Rushdie! As a parent, he did not force this poor soul to follow the footsteps of sure-success of his first famous child. Shame flourished following its own shameful/ shameless (?) destiny and stands out by its own merit!
Rushdie made a beautiful braid of modern fairy-tale with perfectly interlacing strands of - political history, magical realism and the story itself. He wove the past, present and future of a country with pieces of fantasy from Beauty & the Beast and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - their sides interchanging every now & then ~ Beast lurking inside the Beauty and vice versa! And at the same time, his own intervenings from time to time added essential layers and textures to the story he was building - like the inevitable topping, a master touch.
Rushdie made a beautiful braid of modern fairy-tale with perfectly interlacing strands of - political history, magical realism and the story itself. He wove the past, present and future of a country with pieces of fantasy from Beauty & the Beast and Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde - their sides interchanging every now & then ~ Beast lurking inside the Beauty and vice versa! And at the same time, his own intervenings from time to time added essential layers and textures to the story he was building - like the inevitable topping, a master touch.
March 12, 2013
Rushdie has a very unique style to his storytelling; he narrates as a character outside of his tale, yet is wholly invested in it. His tone is casual, imitating the convolutions of an orally told story with not all the bits told in order. In this way, he plays with temporal and spatial linearity very freely, giving hints of the future in tantalising teasers- but still manages to surprise the reader. Shame is about politics, but it is also about families, and failures, and the fractures that can break the human mind. It is about the modern world, but also imbued with the impossibility of Rushdie's imagination. The not-quite-any-one-thing nature of the novel is almost representative of Rushdie's own duality, living as a native-born Indian in England.
As one might expect, shame is a motif throughout the book. Rushdie explores it from many different avenues, and one sees it over and over again, setting events in motion which, like a swirl of dominoes, come crashing towards their denouement.
One facet of Rushdie's writing which surprised and intrigued me was the way he used metanarrative. He refers frequently to the imagined nature of Shame (perhaps to distract from the strains of truth that run deep beneath it?), both detailing the method of his characters' creations and treating them as real people. As a writer myself, I understand this bizarre life of the character as a figment of the author's imagination as well as a being with his own opinions on what should be done with him. It was nice for me to then be able to spy on another (more successful) storyteller's methods, much like Omar with his telescope.
All around, I found this book incredibly hard to put down. Rushdie is an engaging writer who spins his web in seeming randomness, but as the strands pull tighter, it becomes clear what a well-made piece of work Shame really is.
As one might expect, shame is a motif throughout the book. Rushdie explores it from many different avenues, and one sees it over and over again, setting events in motion which, like a swirl of dominoes, come crashing towards their denouement.
One facet of Rushdie's writing which surprised and intrigued me was the way he used metanarrative. He refers frequently to the imagined nature of Shame (perhaps to distract from the strains of truth that run deep beneath it?), both detailing the method of his characters' creations and treating them as real people. As a writer myself, I understand this bizarre life of the character as a figment of the author's imagination as well as a being with his own opinions on what should be done with him. It was nice for me to then be able to spy on another (more successful) storyteller's methods, much like Omar with his telescope.
All around, I found this book incredibly hard to put down. Rushdie is an engaging writer who spins his web in seeming randomness, but as the strands pull tighter, it becomes clear what a well-made piece of work Shame really is.
November 17, 2023
SHARAM...
Една от моите шест звезди.
Забележителна фабула, следвана до края с голямо майсторство и убедителност; водеща към размисли за индивидуални човешки прояви, в които се коренят други много по-глобални проблеми (например фанатизъм, авторитаризъм, власт и пари на всяка цена). Книга за тънката граница между срам и безсрамие (внушаването на срам чрез религия, традиции, затворени общества неусетно прераства в безсрамие и безнравственост, особено при самозабравянето във властта).
Всички стряскащи безумия в романа се омекотяват чрез тънкото чувство за хумор на автора (е, на места е остро). Дългите изреждания (често до 1/2 страница) не дразнят, а умишлено засилват напрежението. Салман Рушди е цар на хиперболите и алегорията. Тази негова книга ме завъртя като в центрофуга подобно на "Сто години самота". На места се задъхвах като в шеметно препускане.
"Обезглавеният му труп рухна на пода, а заситеният Звяр отново притихна. Суфия стоеше несигурно на краката си и в недоумение примигваше с очи. Тя не знаеше (и откъде да знае?), че измислица или не, един ден всички разкази внезапно свършват; че всепоглъщащият пламък едва сега се разгаря; че когато дойде Съдният ден съдиите също ще трябва да отговарят за деянията си; че Звяра на срама не може дълго да съществува в чуждо тяло, защото се храни, расте, разкъсва обвивката си и накрая се взривява."
От "Срам" започна интереса ми към историята и проблемите в Индия и Пакистан след Независимостта/Разделянето. Може би корените на фундаментализма са в тези години, като за това "спомага" и външната международна намеса, поредицата от диктатори, често използващи демагогски религията. Алюзиата към загатнатите политически личности ми беше интересна. Голям "хитряга" е Рушди.
Героите са многобройни като в повечето романи на Рушди, но от тях нямаше на кого да симпатизирам, всички бяха странни и обременени.
Една от любимите ми книги на Салман Рушди. Всъщност ми беше и първата негова книга и го залюбих от първа среща.
“„СРАМ” – бих искал да напиша тази дума на родния си език, а не на чуждия, белязан от погрешни значения и събрани накуп останки от миналото, за което настоящите носители на този език говорят без никакво разкаяние – на езика на английските господари, на който съм принуден да пиша и непрекъснато да уточнявам, допълвам и преиначавам написаното...
„ШАРАМ” – ето коя дума ми е нужна! Нима нищожната думичка „срам” може да предаде нейния пълен смисъл? Три букви: „шин”, „ре”, мим” (разбира се, написани отдясно наляво), плюс ударенията, посочващи късите гласни в съчетанието. Кратка дума, която съдържа в себе си цяла енциклопедия от смислови нюанси. Майките на Омар Хаям му забранила да изпитва не само срам, а и смущение, поражение, безсилие, свитост, свенливост, усещането, че има отредено място в живота; тя включва и други производни на чувството, за които няма съответствия в английския език. Независимо колко бързо човек напуска една страна, той трябва да вземе със себе си някакъв ръчен багаж. Тогава нима можем да се съмняваме, че Омар Хаям (все пак разказваме за него), комуто е било забранено да усеща срам („шарам”) още от ранна възраст, продължаваше да се подчинява на забраната и през зрелите си години, да, да – дълго след като се бе отървал от влиянието на своите майки?
„Не, не можем”, ще отвърнат читателите.
Коя е думата с противоположно значение? Какво остава, след като се отстрани усещането за „шарам”? Разбира се, безсрамие.”
Една от моите шест звезди.
Забележителна фабула, следвана до края с голямо майсторство и убедителност; водеща към размисли за индивидуални човешки прояви, в които се коренят други много по-глобални проблеми (например фанатизъм, авторитаризъм, власт и пари на всяка цена). Книга за тънката граница между срам и безсрамие (внушаването на срам чрез религия, традиции, затворени общества неусетно прераства в безсрамие и безнравственост, особено при самозабравянето във властта).
Всички стряскащи безумия в романа се омекотяват чрез тънкото чувство за хумор на автора (е, на места е остро). Дългите изреждания (често до 1/2 страница) не дразнят, а умишлено засилват напрежението. Салман Рушди е цар на хиперболите и алегорията. Тази негова книга ме завъртя като в центрофуга подобно на "Сто години самота". На места се задъхвах като в шеметно препускане.
"Обезглавеният му труп рухна на пода, а заситеният Звяр отново притихна. Суфия стоеше несигурно на краката си и в недоумение примигваше с очи. Тя не знаеше (и откъде да знае?), че измислица или не, един ден всички разкази внезапно свършват; че всепоглъщащият пламък едва сега се разгаря; че когато дойде Съдният ден съдиите също ще трябва да отговарят за деянията си; че Звяра на срама не може дълго да съществува в чуждо тяло, защото се храни, расте, разкъсва обвивката си и накрая се взривява."
От "Срам" започна интереса ми към историята и проблемите в Индия и Пакистан след Независимостта/Разделянето. Може би корените на фундаментализма са в тези години, като за това "спомага" и външната международна намеса, поредицата от диктатори, често използващи демагогски религията. Алюзиата към загатнатите политически личности ми беше интересна. Голям "хитряга" е Рушди.
Героите са многобройни като в повечето романи на Рушди, но от тях нямаше на кого да симпатизирам, всички бяха странни и обременени.
Една от любимите ми книги на Салман Рушди. Всъщност ми беше и първата негова книга и го залюбих от първа среща.
“„СРАМ” – бих искал да напиша тази дума на родния си език, а не на чуждия, белязан от погрешни значения и събрани накуп останки от миналото, за което настоящите носители на този език говорят без никакво разкаяние – на езика на английските господари, на който съм принуден да пиша и непрекъснато да уточнявам, допълвам и преиначавам написаното...
„ШАРАМ” – ето коя дума ми е нужна! Нима нищожната думичка „срам” може да предаде нейния пълен смисъл? Три букви: „шин”, „ре”, мим” (разбира се, написани отдясно наляво), плюс ударенията, посочващи късите гласни в съчетанието. Кратка дума, която съдържа в себе си цяла енциклопедия от смислови нюанси. Майките на Омар Хаям му забранила да изпитва не само срам, а и смущение, поражение, безсилие, свитост, свенливост, усещането, че има отредено място в живота; тя включва и други производни на чувството, за които няма съответствия в английския език. Независимо колко бързо човек напуска една страна, той трябва да вземе със себе си някакъв ръчен багаж. Тогава нима можем да се съмняваме, че Омар Хаям (все пак разказваме за него), комуто е било забранено да усеща срам („шарам”) още от ранна възраст, продължаваше да се подчинява на забраната и през зрелите си години, да, да – дълго след като се бе отървал от влиянието на своите майки?
„Не, не можем”, ще отвърнат читателите.
Коя е думата с противоположно значение? Какво остава, след като се отстрани усещането за „шарам”? Разбира се, безсрамие.”
December 24, 2021
نيرومندترين واآنش آدم در برابر ترس از شب و خطر و چيزهای ناشناخته چيست؟ اين است که فرار کند، رو
برگرداند و بگريزد؛ وانمود کند که خطر باشتاب به طرف او نمی آيد. و اين همان گرايش ما است به اين که خودمان
را به نفهميدن بزنيم، گرايش جنون آميز به انكار شعورمان در زمانی که نمی توانيم آنچه را که شعور درمی يابد،
تحمل کنيم. لزومی ندارد آه خودمان را به کبك تشبيه آنيم تا به اين گرايشمان جنبه ای نمادی داده باشيم؛ آدميزاد بيش
از هر پرنده ای که پريدن نمی داند، دچار نابينايی خود خواسته است
خواندن این کتاب برام خیلی کند و دشوار بود اما خوشحالم که با نویسنده ی فوق العاده ای آشنا شدم که قطعا خوندن تموم کاراش توی برنامه م خواهد بود
برگرداند و بگريزد؛ وانمود کند که خطر باشتاب به طرف او نمی آيد. و اين همان گرايش ما است به اين که خودمان
را به نفهميدن بزنيم، گرايش جنون آميز به انكار شعورمان در زمانی که نمی توانيم آنچه را که شعور درمی يابد،
تحمل کنيم. لزومی ندارد آه خودمان را به کبك تشبيه آنيم تا به اين گرايشمان جنبه ای نمادی داده باشيم؛ آدميزاد بيش
از هر پرنده ای که پريدن نمی داند، دچار نابينايی خود خواسته است
خواندن این کتاب برام خیلی کند و دشوار بود اما خوشحالم که با نویسنده ی فوق العاده ای آشنا شدم که قطعا خوندن تموم کاراش توی برنامه م خواهد بود
April 10, 2019
Another great masterpiece by Salman Rushie, telling the story of the lives of Iskander Harappa (sometimes assumed to be Zulfikar Ali Bhutto), and General Raza Hyder (sometimes assumed to be General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq).
The concepts of 'shame' and 'shamelessness' are explored through all of the characters, with main focus on Sufiya Zinobia and Omar Khayyám.
4.5* Shame
5* Midnight's Children
2* The Enchantress of Florence
3* Joseph Anton: A Memoir
TR Shalimar the Clown
TR The Moor's Last Sigh
TR The Golden House
The concepts of 'shame' and 'shamelessness' are explored through all of the characters, with main focus on Sufiya Zinobia and Omar Khayyám.
4.5* Shame
5* Midnight's Children
2* The Enchantress of Florence
3* Joseph Anton: A Memoir
TR Shalimar the Clown
TR The Moor's Last Sigh
TR The Golden House
September 6, 2017
Σπονδυλωτό.... παραμυθένιο... αιθέριο... σουρεαλιστικό
Πρωταγωνιστούν ανόητοι τρελοί....Ουισκομανείς, καταλαβαίνετε....
λάτρεις του ωραίου και του αμαρτωλού, που θέλουν να το τσούζουν κ έτσι είναι έτοιμοι να τα διαλύσουν όλα...
Αλλά δεν κατάφερα να μείνω μαζί τους, με τον τρόπο που θα θελα
Πρωταγωνιστούν ανόητοι τρελοί....Ουισκομανείς, καταλαβαίνετε....
λάτρεις του ωραίου και του αμαρτωλού, που θέλουν να το τσούζουν κ έτσι είναι έτοιμοι να τα διαλύσουν όλα...
Αλλά δεν κατάφερα να μείνω μαζί τους, με τον τρόπο που θα θελα
October 28, 2014
Shame - the masterpiece of a master storyteller. I have read some Rushdie in past and every book has been an eye opener. Though his form of writing is technically called - Magical Realism. For me it’s pure and simple magical mythical storytelling. The way he writes is how ancient history is called as mythology. He picks up historical situations whether India's partition in 'Midnight's children, Kashmir extremism in 'Shalimar - the Clown, or Pakistan's politics in 'Shame' and the characters turn into mythological creatures walking the earth and changing it with their hidden powers of information, manipulation, wills and whims. The state leaders are no less than mythological Devils with their evil desires. But there is no goodness in his books, all the characters are evil, there is no happy ending, there is no moral lesson, there is no hope or joy. Life goes on as a torturous grind.
Shame - is based on political state of Pakistan in 60-70s with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Zia-ul-Haq tug of war. The landlords, military power, Pakistan- Bangladesh Split, One unit policy, Baluchistan conflict, dictators and corrupt politicians, daughters as heirs, and everything which shaped history and Pakistan. He takes all these ingredients and weaves in that how 'SHAME' (Haya in Urdu) becomes the root cause of violence - insults, failures, rejections, lust, power, all roads led to Shame and this one road led to violence. The mass murders, backstabbing, killings, everything in the name of Shame. Shame is the most dangerous emotion, even more than fear and anger which too arise post Shame and lose of honor. And being shameless in a shameful society is nothing but an act of Shame.
To read more Book reviews and about books, do visit my blog Storywala
Shame - is based on political state of Pakistan in 60-70s with Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Zia-ul-Haq tug of war. The landlords, military power, Pakistan- Bangladesh Split, One unit policy, Baluchistan conflict, dictators and corrupt politicians, daughters as heirs, and everything which shaped history and Pakistan. He takes all these ingredients and weaves in that how 'SHAME' (Haya in Urdu) becomes the root cause of violence - insults, failures, rejections, lust, power, all roads led to Shame and this one road led to violence. The mass murders, backstabbing, killings, everything in the name of Shame. Shame is the most dangerous emotion, even more than fear and anger which too arise post Shame and lose of honor. And being shameless in a shameful society is nothing but an act of Shame.
To read more Book reviews and about books, do visit my blog Storywala
February 7, 2016
Shame is an undesired sperm that impregnates human psychic with acute guilt and discomfort to procreate a shameless fiend amid continual cerebral labor pains. Molded on a fictionalized caricature of Pakistan’s opinionated and influential communal strata it incubates the embryonic mesh of brutality resulting in social and personal turmoil.
Rushdie along with his emotive quandary constantly appears to be a lost child meandering on the South Asian political-cultural perimeter. With Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children being his two precious manuscripts, Shame lingers on the threshold of allegorical restrains.
Oh! This book isn’t awful, if that’s what you are thinking. I presume I was more than a decade late in reading Rushdie’s Shame. The book would have appalled my wits then as an adolescent luxuriating in a cushy life. However, for me as a seasoned age-defined parasite clinching on the edge of cynical propaganda it was more on the lines of serving a tepid cup of tea with maybe a dry toast.
Rushdie along with his emotive quandary constantly appears to be a lost child meandering on the South Asian political-cultural perimeter. With Satanic Verses and Midnight’s Children being his two precious manuscripts, Shame lingers on the threshold of allegorical restrains.
Oh! This book isn’t awful, if that’s what you are thinking. I presume I was more than a decade late in reading Rushdie’s Shame. The book would have appalled my wits then as an adolescent luxuriating in a cushy life. However, for me as a seasoned age-defined parasite clinching on the edge of cynical propaganda it was more on the lines of serving a tepid cup of tea with maybe a dry toast.
August 2, 2020
My favourite Rushdie book, and probably his most under-rated. In the pages of Shame, Rushdie invents a Pakistani town, and fills it with all of the reverence, mythos, and splendour of any of his other literary creations. A unique feature of the novel is the use of three interchangeable women as the mother of the main character. We follow their son Omar through his entire life, and the different ways that shame, and the various forms it can take, defines, expands, and corrupts his character. Shame has the world building of A Hundred Years of Solitude with the poetic justice of Beloved. It loses a star because it doesn't fully live up to its potential; the book has a lot of Rushdie's inflated hyper-realism and tendency to go in all of the directions at once, at the sacrifice of character development.
February 13, 2021
شرم حالتی درونی که انسان را از کارهای زشت باز می دارد.
در واقع مفهوم شرم در زمینه فرهنگی یک جامعه اسلامی می پردازد.یک رمان اجتماعی و زبان واقع گرایی جادویی که برگرفته از تاریخ پاکستان و با استعاره از شخصیت های سیاسی این کشوره.
هر کسی شرم رو یه جوری بروز میده
خجالت
بی خیالی
خشم
غم توی همه اینا تعریف کار زشت از همه مهمتره کاری که توی فرهنگ شرق زشت و قبیحه شاید توی فرهنگ غرب خیلی هم جاافتاده باشه
ولی شرق هنوز درگیر سنت هایی که باعث عذاب وجدان میشه و شرم به دنبال خودش داره
بدترین حالت شرم در خصوص زنان است و حکومت های اسلامی از این استفاده میکنند
مثل دکتر شکیل که با تمام پیشرفتش در طول عمر هرگز شرم حرامزاده بودن ازش پاک نشد
در واقع مفهوم شرم در زمینه فرهنگی یک جامعه اسلامی می پردازد.یک رمان اجتماعی و زبان واقع گرایی جادویی که برگرفته از تاریخ پاکستان و با استعاره از شخصیت های سیاسی این کشوره.
هر کسی شرم رو یه جوری بروز میده
خجالت
بی خیالی
خشم
غم توی همه اینا تعریف کار زشت از همه مهمتره کاری که توی فرهنگ شرق زشت و قبیحه شاید توی فرهنگ غرب خیلی هم جاافتاده باشه
ولی شرق هنوز درگیر سنت هایی که باعث عذاب وجدان میشه و شرم به دنبال خودش داره
بدترین حالت شرم در خصوص زنان است و حکومت های اسلامی از این استفاده میکنند
مثل دکتر شکیل که با تمام پیشرفتش در طول عمر هرگز شرم حرامزاده بودن ازش پاک نشد
October 30, 2016
I am undecided as to award this book with fours stars or three.
It's a surreal story with some unforgettable characters.
It was surely worth the ride but I must confess that during the first hundred pages I was ready to shamelessly chuck it aside. I am glad I didn't. This is a story that'll stick with me for quite a while.
Ok...... 4 stars
It's a surreal story with some unforgettable characters.
It was surely worth the ride but I must confess that during the first hundred pages I was ready to shamelessly chuck it aside. I am glad I didn't. This is a story that'll stick with me for quite a while.
Ok...... 4 stars
September 6, 2010
Probably one of the best things I've ever been lucky enough to stumble across. The country that's 'Pakistan but not Pakistan' is an amalgamation of countries throughout history, - and events in Pakistan are still clearly the focus. It's an imaginative reworking of history in the style of magic realism, a polemic against theocracy and tyranny, with his main characters based on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto & Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq; and my God, it's brilliant. I'd do it a serious injustice if I attempted to write anymore about it, so I'll end with an extract instead:
'So-called Islamic 'fundamentalism' does not spring, in Pakistan, from the people. It is imposed on them from above. Autocratic regimes find it useful to espouse the rhetoric of faith, because people respect the language, are reluctant to oppose it. This is how religion shores up dictators; by encircling them with words of power, words which the people are reluctant to see discredited, disenfranchised, mocked.
But the ramming-down-the-throat point stands. In the end you get sick of it, you lose faith in the faith, if not qua faith then certainly as the basis for a state. And then the dictator falls, and it is discovered that he has brought God down with him, that the justifying myth of the nation has been unmade. This leaves only two options: disintegration, or a new dictatorship... no, there is a third, and I shall not be so pessimistic as to deny its possibility. The third option is the substitution of a new myth for the old one. Here are three such myths, all available from stock at short notice: liberty; equality; fraternity.
I recommend them highly.'
'So-called Islamic 'fundamentalism' does not spring, in Pakistan, from the people. It is imposed on them from above. Autocratic regimes find it useful to espouse the rhetoric of faith, because people respect the language, are reluctant to oppose it. This is how religion shores up dictators; by encircling them with words of power, words which the people are reluctant to see discredited, disenfranchised, mocked.
But the ramming-down-the-throat point stands. In the end you get sick of it, you lose faith in the faith, if not qua faith then certainly as the basis for a state. And then the dictator falls, and it is discovered that he has brought God down with him, that the justifying myth of the nation has been unmade. This leaves only two options: disintegration, or a new dictatorship... no, there is a third, and I shall not be so pessimistic as to deny its possibility. The third option is the substitution of a new myth for the old one. Here are three such myths, all available from stock at short notice: liberty; equality; fraternity.
I recommend them highly.'
April 29, 2021
I reread this book many years following my Pakistan encounters. It is one beautiful, philosophical, political, fantastical story in a land built on a myth. A great book to read for people from both sides of one subcontinent, and for those in love with it.
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