Shame has as vast and exotic a cast of characters as Midnight's Children, and it is as rich in incident, yet it is a wholly different sort of book. History here is a collective fantasy clinging to the dusty deserts and dilapidated cities of reality, not emanating from the wild imagination of a single, terribly self-conscious narrator. The laughter it provokes is consequently edged with a familiar pain and the marvels it contains are never free of palpable horror.

Most appalling of these is the novel's heroine, Hyder's daughter-who-should-have-been-a-son. Brainless, bestial, immeasurably violent, she is the embodiment of shame itself, and though she prowls around the edges of the story for most of the time, she is the monstrous referent and ultimate ground of all its dark visions. Into this image Rushdie has packed a wealth of psychological insight, for Sufiya Zinobia is the utterly convincing and terrifying...