If Mr. Rushdie had followed [the logic of realistic psychology] in "Shame," he would have robbed his novel of its spectral magic, its breakdown of narrative logic that allows time to rush suddenly forward and reveal the end of things, or permits characters to be reincarnated in each other. He would have robbed his novel of its truth—not precisely the truth of parable or allegory or myth, but the truth of a narrative that describes a world apart and is a system accurate and logical only unto itself.

Most damaging of all, an adherence to realism would have robbed "Shame" of the character of Sufiya Zinobia Hyder…. Sufiya Zinobia is the tiny girl whose gender so enraged her father, Raza Hyder, the future military dictator of his country, that even at her birth she blushed in shame. The heat of that shame incubates a beast inside of...