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Outstanding
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Atlantic Monthly Christopher Hitchens
Breathtakingly well done.... This is a highly serious novel, on an extremely serious subject, by a deeply serious man.
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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
A magical-realist masterpiece.
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Outstanding
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Publishers Weekly William T. Vollman
Shalimar the Clown is a powerful parable about the willing and unwilling subversion of multiculturalism.
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Outstanding
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Washington Post Ron Charles
Modern thriller, Ramayan epic, courtroom drama, slapstick comedy, wartime adventure, political satire, village legend -- they're all blended here magnificently.
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Outstanding
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Los Angeles Times Jonathan Levi
Rushdie's greatest novel since The Satanic Verses.... Transparent, extraordinary writing. [4 Sep 2005]
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Alan Cheuse
At its most furious, Rushdie's prose rises to moving, chantlike crescendos. [4 Sep 2005]
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Favorable
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PopMatters Raquel Laneri
Rushdie's operatic lyricism accompanies the action brilliantly.
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Favorable
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New York Observer David Thomson
One revels at Mr. Rushdie’s conjuring up of people who owe as much to heat and dust as to Indian mythology, but who have the sharp tongues and impatient appetites of people raised on Hollywood movies and rock ’n’ roll.
[12 Sep 2005, p. 2]
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Favorable
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Flak Matt Hanson
True to his magical realism -- and rightful heir to 20th-century masters such as Marquez, Kafka, Joyce and Grass -- Rushdie's words have the sweep if not the sacrament of religious language
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Favorable
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Daily Telegraph Caroline Moore
There is plenty to enjoy in this characteristically daring walk along the tightrope of fiction, strung between the Himalayas and Laurel Canyon. But Rushdie wobbles perilously when he approaches the peg-poles of real life.
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Favorable
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The Observer Jason Cowley
Shalimar the Clown is Rushdie's most engaging book since Midnight's Children. It is a lament. It is a revenge story. It is a love story. And it is a warning -- to Muslims and to secular pluralists alike.
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Favorable
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The Independent Matt Thorne
The story holds up admirably.
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Favorable
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USA Today Deirdre Donahue
Like all of [Rushdie's] best work, Shalimar the Clown offers up mythology, Hindu gods and goddesses, folk tales, popular culture, fantastic occurrences and shimmering prose that is a delight simply to read for its references and nuances.
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Favorable
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Wall Street Journal Sudha Koul
Enchanting and irritating, profound and self-indulgent.
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Favorable
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San Francisco Chronicle Tom Barbash
A vast, richly peopled, beautiful and deeply rageful book that serves as a profound and disturbing artifact of our times.
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Favorable
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Boston Globe John Freeman
Shalimar the Clown... is a book about the dark side of storytelling, about its occult power, and everyone abuses it here.
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Favorable
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Chicago Sun-Times Hedy Weiss
A complex scheme is at work... but often it feels as if Rushdie is giving us the storyboards for a novel -- devising the sharp outlines of his characters but only partially penetrating their psyches.
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Favorable
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Christian Science Monitor Erik Spanberg
A frenzied torrent of ideas, scenes, and observations spill onto every page, leaving the reader either exhausted and exasperated or dizzy and delighted.
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Favorable
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Houston Chronicle Edward Nawotke
Rushdie is able like no other writer to reduce global events to individual lives, to marry macro socio-political conflicts to personal stories.
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Mixed
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LA Weekly Brendan Bernhard
When he isn’t overegging the pudding or turning every other character into an ethnic caricature -- in short, when he concentrates on the narrative -- Rushdie has a damn good story to tell.
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Mixed
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Entertainment Weekly Troy Patterson
[Rushdie] flashily tries to magic-realize a fable of Major Significance.
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Mixed
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The New Yorker John Updike
[Rushdie's] seeming insistence on extreme glamour for his characters limits his room for maneuver within fiction’s curious democracy.
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Mixed
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Village Voice Joy Press
Rushdie heaps divinations and omens until the novel resembles a 10-prophecy pileup.
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Mixed
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The Independent Suhayl Saadi
Shalimar the Clown is a brilliant symphony with some bum notes.
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Mixed
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The Guardian Natasha Walter
From the beginning the prose seems to be straining to live up to expectations, and slipping into hyperbole as a result.
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Mixed
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Daily Telegraph Philip Hensher
Cliches of language are one thing -- a writer may very well have a good reason for using them -- but cliches of thought or observation quite another.
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Mixed
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The Spectator Francis King
There are some breath-takingly eloquent passages; but there are, for me at least, far too many when the stylistic bling induces an immediate need to shield one’s eyes from its gaudiness and glare.
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Mixed
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TLS: The Times Literary Supplement Marco Roth
[Shalimar the Clown] is by turns satire, old- fashioned revenge romance and Hollywood action movie, and it seems to flaunt its determination to put as much padding as possible between readers and feelings.
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Mixed
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Sydney Morning Herald James Ley
Shalimar the Clown is a novel that has a great deal to say, but ultimately is undermined by its own cleverness.
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Mixed
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London Review Of Books Theo Tate
[Shalimar the Clown] is passionate, well-informed and sometimes interesting; but also hackneyed, simplistic and often very, very silly.
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Mixed
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The New York Times Book Review Laura Miller
It gets better, but reading the first 100 or so pages of [Shalimar the Clown] often feels like wearing an ill-fitting, itchy sweater.
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Mixed
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Annabel Lyon
A little too neatly schematic. [10 Sep 2005, p. D6]
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Unfavorable
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The Nation Lee Siegel
Mechanical and morally pretentious.
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Unfavorable
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The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
[Rushdie's] allegory-making machinery clanks and wheezes.
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Unfavorable
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New York Review Of Books Pankaj Mishra
Simulating a history of pure innocence while speaking of the inevitability of violation, Shalimar the Clown enacts a commonplace intellectual and moral confusion, even as it offers a knowingness more comforting than knowledge.
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