An introduction to the works of Salman Rushdie
Our culture correspondent recommends four of the novelist’s books—and one about how the fatwa against him changed the world
Indian-born British author Salman Rushdie dedicates his book in Hungarian language ay the Libri bookshop of Mammut Plaza in Budapest, 29 November 2007. Rushdie is in Hungary to promote the Hungarian edition of his recent book 'Shalimar the Clown'. AFP PHOTO / BALINT PORNECZI (Photo credit should read BALINT PORNECZI/AFP via Getty Images)
Aug 16th 2022
Save
Share
Give
Ayatollah ruhollah khomeini had probably never heard of Salman Rushdie when the bespectacled, slightly balding, Indian-born British author’s fourth novel, “The Satanic Verses”, came out in 1988. Yet within five months, Iran’s supreme leader had made the writer the world’s most famous literary apostate, describing the book as “blasphemous against Islam” and issuing a fatwa on national radio calling for the execution of the author and all those involved in the book’s publication. On February 14th 1989, two hours after the edict was announced, Sir Salman emerged from a memorial service in London for Bruce Chatwin, his friend and fellow author, stepped into a car and sped off into a different life. Today, as the 75-year-old writer lies in hospital, after being attacked on stage in upstate New York by a knife-wielding assailant who was not even born when the fatwa was issued, it is worth recalling why Sir Salman—who was knighted in 2007—is one of the great novelists of our time: funny, brave and endlessly inventive.
Midnight’s Children. By Salman Rushdie. Random House; 560 pages; $18. Vintage; £7.99
“Midnight’s Children” recounts the many-layered story of India’s transition from British Raj rule to bloody partition. It is told through the eyes of Saleem Sinai, who was born at midnight on August 14th-15th 1947, the exact moment of Indian independence. Saleem eventually realises that every child born in the first hour of the newly free nation’s life is imbued with special powers, and that those born closest to midnight are the most powerful of all. Using telepathy, he brings hundreds of children together to debate the myriad challenges facing the fledgling nation and to try and understand how best to harness the children’s special gifts. “Midnight’s Children” announced a major new voice in postcolonial literature. It won the Booker Prize in 1981, as well as being named the Booker’s best winner of all time in both 1993 and 2008, to celebrate the prize’s 25th and 40th anniversaries. It was also adapted (unsuccessfully, we thought) into a film.
The Satanic Verses. By Salman Rushdie. Random House; 576 pages, $19. Consortium Inc; £9.99
Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, the two protagonists of “The Satanic Verses”, are Indian expatriate actors, one a Bollywood superstar and the other a voiceover artist working in England. On a flight from India to Britain, their plane is hijacked over the English Channel. Farishta is magically transformed into the archangel Gabriel and Chamcha into a devil, who on his return to Earth, is arrested as a suspected illegal immigrant. Whereas Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers regarded one of the book’s three dream sequences as an insult to the Prophet Muhammad (of the other two, one is about Ayesha, an Indian peasant girl who receives Archangel Gibreel’s revelations, and the third is about a fanatical contemporary religious leader known as the “Imam”), many readers took the book to be a satire on 1980s Britain. Sir Salman, by contrast, saw it principally as a novel about transformation and how a shift of place affects people and their cultures. The book is not about Islam, he said, “but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay”.
Haroun and the Sea of Stories. By Salman Rushdie. Penguin; 224 pages; $27 and £8.99
After “The Satanic Verses”, Sir Salman concentrated on a book of children’s stories addressed to Zafar, his young son, from whom he had been separated by the fatwa. Jokes, allegories and puns from several languages fill “Haroun and the Sea of Stories”. A 20th-century “One Thousand and One Nights”, the book opens in a city so swathed in misery it cannot remember what it is called, and features several characters whose names allude to speech or silence. “Haroun and the Sea of Stories” was released as an audiobook read by Sir Salman himself, and adapted for the stage as both a play and opera. We published an article about the book’s enduring charm in 2020, 30 years after its publication.
Joseph Anton: A Memoir. By Salman Rushdie. Random House; 656 pages; $18. Vintage; £12.99.
In 2012 Sir Salman published “Joseph Anton”, a memoir about how he and his family had lived for almost a decade under the threat of murder. The title comes from the pseudonym he chose to help maintain his security, inspired by two of the writers he loved most: Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. A study of confusion, fear and wrath, “Joseph Anton” casts a tender look on those who stood by him while exposing the politicians and rainy-day friends who chose to put their own interests before those of a man in mortal jeopardy.
From Fatwa to Jihad: How the World Changed: The Satanic Verses to Charlie Hebdo. By Kenan Malik. Atlantic Books, 272 pages; £12.99
For those who were not yet born in 1989, or for older readers who are still unclear about how the Ayatollah’s fatwa changed the world, few books are as clear and as far-sighted as “From Fatwa to Jihad”, by Kenan Malik, a British-raised psychologist, author and journalist, which was first published in 2010. “Muslim fury seemed driven not by questions of harassment, discrimination or poverty,” Mr Malik wrote in 2018, the 30th anniversary of the publication of “The Satanic Verses”. In the late 1980s no one talked much about identity politics. Nowadays, “such grievance is entrenched in the cultural landscape”. It is a fair bet that were it written today “The Satanic Verses” would not be published—simply for fear of giving offence.■
