Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie Mirdad offers lessons on themes

Mirdad offers lessons on themes such as love

Deja and Josiah are seasonal best friends

and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels

most languages had no words for numbers greater than five - anything from six to infinity was known as 'lots'

The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien

Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie Mirdad offers lessons on themesLos Angeles, 1991. Maximilian Ophuls, one of the makers of the modern world, is knifed to death in broad daylight on the doorstep of his illegitimate daughter India, slaughtered by his Kashmiri driver, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the Clown. The dead man is a World War II Resistance hero, a man of formidable intellectual ability and much erotic appeal, a former United States ambassador to India, and subsequently America's counter