Shame, by Salman Rushdie

Shame is a book about choices, gender, power, and the feelings attendant upon these things. Shifting between settings in Pakistan and India, Rushdie examines the governement and the choices of those in power. What are the consequences of the exercise or non-exercise of power and how do people experience and cope with shame? The story is stylized as a fairy tale, not meant to be a chronicle of India/Pakistan relations. The characters are interesting, odd enough to be memorable, and richly detailed. The story begins with three sisters in a huge house deciding to create a son between them. To accomplish their plan, they throw a huge party and invite mainly the British from the cantonment, thus creating a major rift in feeling between themselves and their fellow villagers. They do, infact, conceive a son. The book follows his life story and the people he meets along the way. His three mothers send him on his way with the advice, "Feel no shame."