The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie, 1988
★ 3.71 from 73.9k ratings on Goodreads
A hijacked plane, a metamorphosis, and two men falling through the sky into a London of migrants, visions and doubt. A restless, dreamlike novel that mixes unease and wonder with sharp comedy and sudden shifts in voice and place.
Feels like unease, curiosity and wonder. About faith, freedom and identity.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy imaginative fiction that asks hard questions about faith, migration and identity. Be ready for a dense, dreamlike structure that some readers find confusing and slow, and for religious portrayals that offend some readers.
Why read it
It gives you a vivid, unsettling look at how people remake themselves in a new country, and at the arguments that faith and doubt can set off.
A page from the book
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? What readers say
Readers are split: many find it dazzlingly imaginative and rewarding, while others are bored, frustrated, and confused by its dense, dreamlike structure. The religious portrayals provoke strong offense and disgust in some, and anger at censorship and threats against the author is also prominent.
Salman Rushdie.After The Satanic Verses was published, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Rushdie in 1989; he lived under police protection for years.
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Satanic Verses for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy imaginative fiction that asks hard questions about faith, migration and identity. Be ready for a dense, dreamlike structure that some readers find confusing and slow, and for religious portrayals that offend some readers.
- What is The Satanic Verses like?
- A restless, dreamlike novel that mixes unease and wonder with sharp comedy and sudden shifts in voice and place. Feels like unease, curiosity and wonder. About faith, freedom and identity.
- What should I read after The Satanic Verses?
- If you liked The Satanic Verses, try Brave New World (Aldous Huxley), Notes from Underground (Fyodor Dostoevsky) and The Exorcist (William Peter Blatty).
A taste of the feed
What is lost when nothing is allowed to stand between wanting and having.
Impulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well-being. (The embryo is hungry; day in, day out, the blood-surrogate pump unceasingly turns its eight hundred revolutions a minute. The decanted infant howls; at once a nurse appears with a bottle of external secretion. Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers.
Brave New World · Aldous Huxley
The injury that lasts longer than a blow: being looked through.
I was standing by the billiard-table and in my ignorance blocking up the way, and he wanted to pass; he took me by the shoulders and without a word—without a warning or explanation—moved me from where I was standing to another spot and passed by as though he had not noticed me. I could have forgiven blows, but I could not forgive his having moved me without noticing me.
Notes from Underground · Fyodor Dostoevsky
Some people are cold in a way no weather can fix.
The blaze of sun wrung pops of sweat from the old man’s brow, yet he cupped his hands around the glass of hot sweet tea as if to warm them.
The Exorcist · William Peter Blatty
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