Point of View

Shame is told in the third-person by an author who frequently intrudes into the narrative. He explains how the novel would be different if it were a true story about Pakistan, laments his introducing a characters as vile as Omar Khayyam Shakil and as pitiable as Sufiya Zinobia Hyder Shakil to be its heroes, explains how he invented Sufiya Zinobia as a composite of three characters from the newspapers and vents on various political, social and religious topics. Thus, Salman Rushdie, prize-winning novelist, forced into hiding in London after the furor caused by his Satanic Verses, is very nearly a character in the novel, in which he claims will be his last exploration of the Eastern mind.

Setting

Shame is set in Pakistan in the 1980s, with flashbacks to 1947 and the author's tongue-in-cheek proviso that it is not a historical novel. He mentions historical figures like...