Shame

Salman Rushdie’s Shame (1988) is a phantasmagoric epic set in an unnamed country that is “not quite Pakistan. ” This dazzling tale of an ongoing duel between the families of two men–one a celebrated wager of war, the other a debauched lover of pleasure–is told by an unidentified narrator whose rhetoric shifts from third to first person and back again. As he battles with opposing images of what he refers to as “honor” and “shamelessness” throughout his narration, the narrator also tells a political story about three young men who are jailed for no apparent reason, a story that grows increasingly timely by the day.