The Satanic Verses: A Novel

Salman Rushdie

Feb 2011 · Random House

About this ebook

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths.”—Newsday

Winner of the Whitbread Prize

One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.

Praise for The Satanic Verses

“Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Exhilarating, populous, loquacious, sometimes hilarious, extraordinary . . . a roller-coaster ride over a vast landscape of the imagination.”—The Guardian (London)

“A novel of metamorphoses, hauntings, memories, hallucinations, revelations, advertising jingles, and jokes. Rushdie has the power of description, and we succumb.”—The Times (London)

Ratings and reviews

(finished 6.3.12) there is no reason this book should have been banned. The only possible person who could be offended by this book is a fundamentalist muslim literary scholar. It's just symbolism! it's hardly anti-anything. it is, however, another example of beautiful writing by Rushdie. I liked this book as much as midnight's children and the moor's last sigh. Rushdie's writing is so absorbing - I just love the stories he tells and the images he paints. This book is fascinating - the reader experiences the dreams/films/alternative universes of each of the two main characters whether they are historical, fantastical, or dramatic. loved it.

I wouldnt recommend reading Satanic Verses as an introduction to Rushdie as a writer. Its fascinating, and I like it, but I think Midnights Children is just as good in its own way and requires far less brain straining. Ive met too many people who tried to read Satanic Verses and were thus discouraged from the rest of his work.

This book is written by so called Muslim who have only one thing his mind how he can get popularity. How it is possible that you are believer and write against his teaching. It is same thing that a christian believe in bible and don't believe on Jesus. Just wasting of time to read this book.

About the author

Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight’s Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor’s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the European Union’s Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a former president of PEN America. His books have been translated into over forty languages.