The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie, 1988
A hijacked plane, a metamorphosis, and two men falling through the sky into a London of migrants, visions and doubt.
Salman Rushdie
After The Satanic Verses was published, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Rushdie in 1989; he lived under police protection for years.
Feels like unease, faith and curiosity.
What it costs to be the shadow of someone who gets away with everything.
For are they not coinjoined opposites, these two, each man the other’s shadow? – One seeking to be transformed into the foreigness he admires, the other preferring, contemptuously, to transform; one, a hapless fellow who seems to be continually punished for uncommitted crimes, the other called angelic by one and all, the type of man who gets away with everything. – We may describe Chamcha as being somewhat less than life-size; but loud, vulgar Gibreel is, without question, a good deal larger than life, a disparity which might easily inspire neo-Procrustean lusts in Chamcha: to stretch himself by cutting Farishta down to size. What is unforgivable? Books by Salman Rushdie
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