Rushdie Redux

Uma has a round-up of reactions to Rushdie and Shalimar The Clown here. And here's another review -- this time, over the top in its acclaim -- from the Detroit Free Press, by the intriguingly-named Marta Salij: "...like all great novels, what it is about is unquotable and irreducible. It is 'about' what it is: a seductively told tale whose reading shifts the plates of the world."

Update: In The Times, UK, Justine Hardy strikes a note of guarded praise: "This book is a colossus almost bestriding the great and growing rift, though sometimes losing its balance. We have a double helix that spins together information and misinformation. Perhaps Rushdie expects us to be able to distinguish between truth and fiction, almost line by line. But this is a novel, and that must not be forgotten, particularly when it turns from tightrope to razor’s edge in the most powerful parts of the book, the ones that will be written about and argued over most...This is an important book, a wonderful reversing story with a cast of characters with names that are not their names, and ideals that have been thrust upon them, but this is not a real study of the anatomy of terrorist warfare or its perpetrators. Remember this as you read this vast story set in a splintering world reflected in lakes. "