Shame

by Taslima Nasrin

Book Overview

Not since Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses has the publication of a book provoked such mob violence, public outcries for the arrest and death of the author, and international efforts to secure her safety.The animosity and bloodletting between Muslim and Hindu extremists on the Indian subcontinent is centuries old. When the Barbri Mosque at Ayodhya, India, was destroyed by Hindu fundamentalists on December 6, 1992, fierce mob reprisals took place against...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1573921653
• ISBN13: 9781573921657
• Release Date: October 1997
• Publisher: Prometheus Books
• Length: 302 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

very nice

A beauty of a writer! for muslims - religion first and nationalism later be it whichever contry all such people will suffer one day at the knees of god there are tears rolling down when i just completed reading the book shame on you islamic fundamentalists

Religion??!!?

It is widely known that man was God's best creation and when man goes in search of their "own" Gods, all hell breaks loose. What an irony! It makes the reader wonder whether the people of the yesteryears were so out of work, that they actually had the time and nerve to battle over a mosque that was built upon a temple ages back. As for the style of writing, it is true that the author has put in too much of historical data. It was more like reading a book on the history of India... It would have been a lot better if the chronological actions were all removed and instead, replaced with more elaboration on the individual and human aspect of the characters.

shocking to know man can be so crual

I m thrilled to read this book . Its the first book that I have ever read and am thrilled to read a book on the cruelty of man in the name of religion. Hindu and Muslim, I accept that they are two different religion. but both the religion and there holy literature teach only love, peace, and harmony among not just there own religion but also among people of different sects and religion. The writer has written this book in such a lucid language that its a pleasure reading this book. Tears roll down your eyes when you read this book. I for once really could not stop tears flowing out of my eyes. Why in this world people practice communalism? Why is there hate among people on the grounds of religion? These are few question that the fundamentalists have to answer. If you want to feal the pinch about human cruelty, if you want to visualize the pinch of communalism, than this is the book that I suggest you and everyone to read. Dont miss it its really one of the greatest books written

Chilling...very disturbing

While this book may not be great literature, it is a chilling indictment of Moslem persecution of the Hindu minority in Bangladesh following the destruction of the Babri Masjid in India.Taslima Nasrin has provided many factual accounts of desecration and destruction of Hindu temples and atrocities against the Hindu minority in her book. One reviewer likened the experience of Hindus in Bangladesh to Muslims in India. There is no comparison. That reviewer intimates the destruction of the Babri Masjid (itself built to desecrate a Hindu temple) outweighs the destruction of thousands of Hindu temples in South Asia following that event!! I have traveled in both India and Bangladesh, and Muslims in India have much greater freedom and security than Hindus in Bangladesh.

A gripping, effectively written, novel.

This novel only became known in the West because of the fatwa on the author. Yet, because of this, all the attention has been on the author herself rather than the book. The few comments about the novel that have been published tend to be rather dismissive about it. People says its "hastily written" and "unimaginative". I bought the book just to see whether it was any good as a novel. I found that it certainly wasn't flawless. But I also found it was gripping. I kept turning the pages to see how the story would develop. The pages of documentary evidence did get in the way - but it was precisely because I wanted the story to progress that I found them intrusive. I suspect that some of the negative comment on the novel is simply because many people like their art to be refined and apolitical. "Shame" is, after all, realism: and although it is somewhat "unimaginative", that isn't necessarily an insuperable charge for a work of realism - which is more interested in such issues as truth and unflinching fidelity. In any case, there is an essential imaginativeness here - one to do with empathy - that, the book implies, is altogether lacking in a lot of other people. Indeed, the book shows that a little imagination can go a long way.