The first section, set in present-day Los Angeles, revolves around the life of India Ophuls, a beautiful documentary maker and the daughter of Max Ophuls, a former American ambassador to India and later the US counterterrorism chief. The book is divided into five parts, which are told through the eyes of the five main characters that we encounter. Using the hyperverbal style for which he has become known, the magical realism load which enabled him to make mythical and historical connections that would otherwise remain hidden, Rushdie traces the roots of violence and the way its expression twists and ruins our world. The novel explores the fall of Kashmir from a haven of tolerance and peace to a hotbed of extremism and fundamentalist violence through the smaller story of two people who grow up there, fall in love, and then are torn apart by circumstances that result in murder, bloodshed, and tragedy. Salman Rushdie’s 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown picks up some of the same themes that he has been working with throughout his critically acclaimed career.
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