800. The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie
1988
Around 550 pages

800! Given the publication of The Satanic Verses has been directly related to many deaths, enjoying it as a novel doesn't really seem to be the point of its inclusion here. For me, his style is too similar to Thomas Pynchon and I just spend the entire time counting down the pages, waiting for it to end.

The Satanic Verses consists of a frame narrative, interwoven with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar known for playing Hindu deities while Chamcha is an emigrant who works as a voiceover artist in England. At the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a plane hijacked by Sikh separatists, flying from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two are magically saved. In a miraculous transformation, Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gabriel and Chamcha that of a devil. 

I really don't enjoy extended dream sequences, which unfortunately make up a good deal of the novel. Like many novels that cause panic, its message is largely misunderstood. But I've never enjoyed Rushdie's exhaustive style, so it's a no for me.

 

RATING: **---

Interesting Facts:

Fearing unrest, the Rajiv Gandhi government banned the importation of the book into India.

In 1989, Supreme Leader of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against Rushdie, resulting in several failed assassination attempts on the author, who was granted police protection by the UK government, and attacks on connected individuals, including the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi who was stabbed to death in 1991.

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