He lived in the fictional Kashmiri village of Pachigam. Several flashbacks take the readers to the past, and one learns that Shalimar was once full of affection, love and laughter. Max Ophuls, a US diplomat who has worked in the Kashmir Valley, is murdered by his former chauffeur, Shalimar.

Although a number of narratives and incidents in the novel revolve around Kashmir, the novel opens in Los Angeles. The central character, India, is the illegitimate child of a former United States ambassador to India, Maximilian Ophuls. The title refers to a character in the story, a Kashmiri villager named Shalimar, who performs a tightrope act for the amusement of the other villagers. The town itself is imaginary, but it is located in an accurate geographic location not far from Srinagar. The novel is based partly in a small town in the region of Kashmir. Shalimar the Clown won the 2005 Vodafone Crossword Book Award and was one of the finalists for the 2005 Whitbread Book Awards. Shalimar is also the name of one of the characters featured in the novel.

Srinagar is one of several Mughal Gardens, which were laid out in several parts of undivided India when the Mughals reigned over the subcontinent. Shalimar the Clown derives its name from Shalimar Gardens, in the vicinity of Srinagar. The novel took Rushdie four years to write, and was initially published on 6 September 2005 by Jonathan Cape. Shalimar the Clown is a 2005 novel by Salman Rushdie. Man Booker Prize Nominee for Longlist (2005), Vodafone Crossword Book Award for Fiction (2005)

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