Shame is Salman Rushdie's third novel, published in 1983. On the face of it, Shame is a novel about Pakistan and about the people who ruled Pakistan. One of the main aims of the novel is to portray the lives of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and their relationship. The more central theme is the violence that is born out of shame. There are characters that actually 'stand' for 'shame' and 'shamelessness' — Sufiya Zinobia and Omar Khayyám respectively.
When one reads the novel carefully, though, the city being portrayed is an imaginary one, the city of Q. The author-narrator makes it clear in the second chapter of the novel that the city of Q is an imaginary representation of any country: "My view is that I am not writing only about Pakistan" (Rushdie, 29). Shame discusses heritage, authenticity, truth, and, of course, shame and shamelessness, as well as the impact of all these themes on an individual, the protagonist Omar Khayyám.
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He became famous with his second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), which brought to him the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his early fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical fiction, and a dominant theme of his writing is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world.
If India was once the pearl in the crown of the ex-British Empire, the Bombay-born Salman Rushdie is a priceless jewel of his own in the realm of the contemporary English literature. Irreverent, fearless and constantly on the hunt for new, forever more enchanting universes to be discovered, the British-Indian writer has so far built, both through his literary opus magnum and through his public engagements, a reputation of a highly praised and highly controversial modern times genius. His second novel “Midnight Children’ (1981), a masterful depiction of the metamorphoses in post-colonial India, was immediately spotted by the critics and won the Man Booker prize. Upon the publishing of his “Satanic Verses” (1988), probably the most discussed and scandalous piece of modern prose, atrociously accused of being a blasphemy on the Muslim world, humanity turned over night into a pack of insatiable readers. “Shame” (1983) fuses magic and historical realism, in an almost indiscernible fashion, to create of tortured portrait of Pakistan. In 2007 Salman Rushdie was appointed a Knight Bachelor by Her Majesty Elizabeth II for “services in literature”.
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