The novel that set the stage for his modern classic, The Satanic Verses, Shame is Salman Rushdie's phantasmagoric epic of an unnamed country that is "not quite Pakistan." In 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-Rushdie brilliantly portrays a world caught between honor and humiliation-"shamelessness, shame: the roots of violence." Shame is an astonishing...

A family saga reflecting the troubled state of India. The protagonists are four generations of the da Gama, who became wealthy in the spice trade before declining into gangsterism. Their tale is narrated by the family's last descendant and he attributes their fall to bickering, a reflection of Hindu-Moslem strife plaguing India today. Peopled with odd characters--the narrator is the product of a Jewish father and a Christian mother--the novel is a...