A mesmerizing tale centered in Kashmir but roaming around the world and throughout history. The large cast of characters are each enchanting or entrancing in turn (although, oddly, the protagonist, India Ophuls, is not). The central tragedy of the story is the transformation of Kashmir from a Garden of Eden populated with warm, humble, enchanting, and enchanted rural villagers, into a ravaged moonscape populated by cold-blooded, fanatic, malevolent marauders from Pakistan and India; the story of Shalimar the Clown and Boonyi recapitulates the tragedy on a personal level, each proceeding toward their respective dooms after Boonyi eats from the forbidden fruit of modernity and Shalimar the Clown becomes an Islamist terrorist by way of passage to the execution of his personal terrorist agenda.

Rushdie`s writing is mesmerizing throughout. The narrative is a dense tapestry that seems to lead in many directions but is all, in the end, tightly woven together. The only weakness, in my humble opinion, was that his protagonaist, India Ophuls, is an unappetizing character in her own right. The story of her childhood as the "root cause" for her unappealing traits is an oddly sociological, Oprah-istic formulation in a novel that is dominated by innocence and evil frankly declared.

Notwithstanding the overarching tragedy of the narrative, there is considerable humor of both the life-affirming and the splenetic varieties. On the other hand, Rushdie`s proper English gentlemanliness creeps in occasionally in his disdain for those sullied by commerce or uniforms.