Random musings of a self-indulgent showman

Fiction: Sex and bits of history, popular culture, classical references and many nods to Scheherazade, not forgetting tough-guy slang, attempted gags and stock elements of the grotesque, laced with sufficient violence to keep the drowsy awake - and as usual there is a ripe, if troubled and troublesome maiden undulating across the stage.

Yes indeed, it's showtime - again. Salman Rushdie, showman and erstwhile serious writer, rolls up his sleeves and proceeds to present Shalimar the Clown, yet another of his recent, complacently rambling, self-indulgent extravaganzas directed at an adoring literary establishment still prepared to forgive his every trick because he did, let no one forget, write one monumental novel, Midnight's Children. Published 25 years ago, and bearing echoes of Günter Grass, it continues to justify Rushdie's career, if not his every utterance, and confirms that his art revolves upon an opportunist trick: that of milking his culture dry and exposing it to a western readership. Meanwhile, The Satanic Verses (1988) continues to overshadow his life.

Who exactly is he writing for now? And why? His political arguments have been made. History took up the tale. JM Coetzee has moved on from apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa to Australia. But Rushdie, whose third novel, Shame (1983), remains underrated, appears incapable of either reassessing or reinventing his voice. T

here have been moments of lightness, such as Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), possessed of lightness and free-flowing story, but they were only interludes, incapable of preventing Rushdie from recycling themes and digressive plots.

Meanwhile, a generation of outstanding Indian writers, still inspired by pioneering giants such as RK Narayan and Shiva Naipaul, and headed by Rohinton Mistry, Amitav Ghosh, Upamanyu Chatterjee and Amit Chaudhuri and others, have emerged to challenge for the supremacy of the novel. The finest of the contemporary Indian writers - gifted prose writers with subtle humour and a flair for dialogue - are among the best in the world, and it is an elite that does not include Rushdie.

At all too frequent intervals throughout this irritating performance, and performance it is, Rushdie appears to have lost interest in telling stories, never mind making political and cultural comments - or even the slightest gesture towards notions of narrative cohesion or even coherence. The reader is assailed by heavy-duty surges of déjà vu. Anyone who has read his previous work may feel they have already done battle with this new book, and it is probably because they have.

Variations on a theme are satisfying and have provided the basis of many true works of art. But tired repetition arrives at a very different reality. This is a novel born of a thin thesis, a mighty defiant love that yields to a cynical arrangement negotiated in lust only to end in cartoon-like revenge. Characterisation has never been among Rushdie's strengths, and on this showing has not become one yet. Ambassador's daughter India (get the symbolism?) lies restlessly in bed: "At times she cried out in a language she did not speak. Men had told her this, nervously. Not many men had ever been permitted to be present while she slept."

Incredibly beautiful and incredibly messed up, India is the outcome of an affair her roving father, Max, once had with Boonyi, a beautiful and ambitious dancing girl. This girl, who left her long-time love and husband, Shalimar, a trained clown, to see if she could better herself through the patronage of a wealthy westerner, is painted as a deeply unpleasant character. No one could accuse Rushdie of playing for sympathy for anyone in the book. The story, such as it is, lurches along, through five lazy long chapters.

The dancing master commissioned to refine the dancing skills of Boonyi soon realises she has little to offer aside from her beauty. The girl turns to junk food, Max the ambassador looks elsewhere. Just when it seems the failed dancer is about to explode through excess weight, her pregnancy is discovered. The ambassador's career is over and Shalimar is determined to avenge the insult to his pride. He vows to kill both Boonyi and her lover.

The narrative wanders along, its action caught up in the standard Rushdie soup of asides, digressions and caricatures such as old Nazarebaddoor, an ancient seer - "Her husband had offended her by dying without managing to leave her with so much as a single son to look after her in her declining years, which she considered the height of bad manners." When the old girl finally dies, she doesn't really. Some 18 years after her death, she is still "intervening in local affairs when the need arose". She is quoted as admitting that death suits her, as "the hours are better".

Rushdie enjoys working within layers of anecdote and story, usually centred on one eccentric character. At intervals, he then suspends the action to make a profound statement, such as "truth is truth" or "The world does not stop but cruelly continues".

Max, the ambassador, allows the use of a European interlude. His background as the son of French Jewish publishers is sketched in. He becomes a hero in the Resistance and meets a colourful partner, the Grey Rat. They marry but their friendship falters, as she has no interest in sex.

And sex is the pivot of the book. Boonyi having returned in disgrace - Max has dismissed her and his childless wife has claimed the baby - waits, naked, for Shalimar to kill her, although she could already be dead. Anyhow, she has lost some weight. "Her body told the story of her life . . . She wanted him to see her story, to read the book of her nakedness, before he did what he had come to do." When he does arrive, she says: "Do you want to eat first? . . . if you want to eat, there's food."

Long before this ridiculous scene, Shalimar has already killed the ambassador. By the end of the narrative, Shalimar, having fled a number of US prisons where he has been held waiting trial for murdering Max, is poised to kill India, the child of his faithless wife.

What is the point of fiction such as this? On one occasion, a character says of JF Kennedy, "too much sex and a bad back is what got the president assassinated". Kennedy's back brace, here referred to as a "truss", is blamed for having prevented him from bending over, thus avoiding that fatal second bullet. Rushdie just puts this in for effect. Since the publication of The Moor's Last Sigh (1995), Rushdie has looked more to fame and topicality than to the imagination. It is as if he now has only contempt for the reader, whom he believes should be grateful to read whatever it is the great man chooses to throw together. Flaunting the licence to write whatever skips into his mind, he has tossed off random musings.

Who could have possibly read this bogus ragbag in advance of publication and judged it as coherent and worthwhile? Rushdie enjoys using words such as "truth" and "honour". Yet this celebrity comic-book novel says nothing and goes nowhere. It merely serves as a poor sequel to disappointing books such as The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) and the seriously appalling Fury (2001).

Whatever about the folly of having half-cooked waffle such as this on the longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize, which was an insult to writers who still have something to say, at least it didn't make the shortlist last Thursday. Fame can and does submerge a talent; here's an example.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times

Shalimar the Clown By Salman Rushdie. Cape, 398pp. £17.99