Shame

It is an astute, gleeful, political tale in which Rushdie dazzles with his prodigious gift for satire.

Guardian

Every bit as good as Midnight's Children

The Times

There can seldom have been so robust and baroque an incarnation of the political novel as Shame. It can be read as a fable, polemic or excoriation; as history or as fiction... This is the novel as myth and as satire

Sunday Telegraph

Salman Rushdie has earned the right to be called one of our great story tellers

Observer

Shame is and is not about Pakistan, that invented, imaginary country... The theme is shame and shamelessness, born from the violence which is modern history. Revelation and obscurity, affairs of honour, blushings of all parts, the recession of erotic life, the open violence of public life, create the extraordinary Rushdie mood

Guardian

Shame is every bit as good as Midnight's Children. It is a pitch-black comedy of public life and historical imperatives

The Times

Salman Rushdie is a magnificent writer. He has a free-ranging imagination and a coarse, strong wit. He attackes language with energy and without constraint

Independent