The phrase "an explosion shook" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a sudden and powerful disturbance caused by an explosion, often in a narrative or descriptive context.
Example: "As the bomb detonated, an explosion shook the entire building, sending debris flying in all directions."
Alternatives: "a blast rocked" or "a detonation rattled".
Late today, an explosion shook a leading human rights office in central Jakarta.
Last Friday, at 3 26 P.M., an explosion shook my office building, above Oslo's Central Station.
As he lifted the key of the house from the lawyer's desk an explosion shook the building.
As Gulliver noted last month, Flight 32 was passing over the Indonesian island of Batam when an explosion shook the aircraft, an enormous Airbus A380.
When an explosion shook one of many stricken reactors at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Saturday, power company officials initially offered a typically opaque, and understated, explanation.
David, who asked to be called by his first name, was in the Comptoir Voltair cafe near to the Stade de France when an explosion shook the cafe.
A explosion shook a branch of the China Construction Bank late Thursday afternoon in Wuhan, a provincial capital in south-central China, a municipal police official there said, and state media reported that at least two people were killed and more than 10 were injured.
If you do want an explosion, shake up a can of soda and point it at someone's face.
Abdulrahman al-Dhurafi had just finished his morning prayers in Yemen's northwestern city of Saada on August 4, when a blast from an almighty explosion shook his house.
On a Friday afternoon in July 2011, Andrea Gjestvang was preparing to leave the offices of the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang, where she was working as a temporary photo editor, when an enormous explosion shook the building, blowing out windows.
Immigrant vegetable pickers strain local police forces: in 2011 a fatal explosion shook Boston, an elegant Lincolnshire town that is home to many of them, when one lit a cigarette at an illicit vodka distillery.
