Shame, Paperback/Salman Rushdie

The novel that set the stage for his modern classic, The Satanic Verses , Shame is Salman Rushdie's phantasmagoric epic of an unnamed country that is "not quite Pakistan." In this dazzling tale of an ongoing duel between the families of two men-one a celebrated wager of war, the other a debauched lover of pleasure-Rushdie brilliantly portrays a world caught between honor and humiliation-"shamelessness, shame: the roots of violence." Shame is an astonishing story that grows more timely by the day.