SALMAN RUSHDIE, SHAME(1983)

 SALMAN RUSHDIE, SHAME(1983)

Quote

The country in this story is not Pakistan, or not quite. There are two countries, real and fictional, occupying the same space, or almost the same space. My story, my fictional country exists, like myself, at a slight angle to reality. I have found this off-centering to be necessary; but its value is, of course, open to debate. My view is that I am not writing only about Pakistan.

I have not given the country a name. And Q. is not really Quetta at all.

Basic set-up:

Rushdie's narrator tells us that Shame is a story about Pakistan's messy political history.

But it's also not.

Thematic Analysis

Rushdie, like many other Magic Realists, is all about political critique. Shame is all about the dictatorships that messed up Pakistan.

In this passage, Rushdie's narrator is making it clear that he's talking about politics and history. He's talking about a specific country, Pakistan, but he's also talking about all other countries that have been messed up because of bad political governing.

Stylistic Analysis

Rushdie's narrative is hybrid because it mixes together the real and the fictional. The narrator's talking about Pakistan, but he's also not. He's talking about a real country, but he's also talking about a made-up one.

There are, in other words, two planes of reality in the passage. There's the real and the fictional; there's Pakistan and there's another imaginary place. But both planes are brought together in this one passage, so it's hard to say whether this is fact or fiction.