The Satanic Verses Paperback - 1997

Name: The Satanic Verses
Price: 7.36 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Salman Rushdie
ISBN: 9780676970630

by Salman Rushdie

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About this book

The Satanic Verses is a novel written by Salman Rushdie, published in 1988. It weaves together multiple narratives and explores themes of identity, religion, and cultural conflict, including the idea of cultural hybridity and the ways in which individuals negotiate their identities in a multicultural world.

The novel begins with a fictionalized version of the true story of the hijacking of an airplane from Bombay to London, which ends with the two main characters, Gibreel and Saladin, miraculously surviving a fall from the plane. The rest of the novel takes place in a dream-like state that turns the work into a magical realism novel.

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie was criticized by many conservative groups, which defined the book as blasphemous and offensive to Islam. Rushdie was even the subject of a fatwa, or religious edict, calling for his death. Due to the controversies that led to its publication, The Satanic Verses has been banned in several countries such as Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

From the publisher

Salman Rushdie is the author of seven novels, including The Satanic Verses, The Ground Beneath Her Feet and Midnight’s Children for which he won the Booker Prize and the “Booker of Bookers.”

First Edition Identification

The Satanic Verses book was first published in London in 1988 by Viking. The first edition had a price of £12.95, and copies with the original wraparound band are very scarce. It was bound in blue cloth with lettering to the spine in gilt. The original unclipped dust jacket was also navy with lettering in red.

Details

Title The Satanic Verses
Author Salman Rushdie
Binding Paperback
Edition Reprint
Pages 576
Volumes 1
Language ENG
Publisher Vintage Books Canada, Mississauga, ON, Canada
Date 1997
ISBN 9780676970630 / 067697063X
Weight 1.32 lbs (0.60 kg)
Dewey Decimal Code FIC

Media reviews

"A glittering novelist -- one with startling imagination and intellectual resources, a master of perpetual storytelling." -- V.S. Pritchett, The New Yorker

"A staggering achievement, brilliantly enjoyable." -- Nadine Gordimer

"A masterpiece." -- Sunday Times

"Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Voltaire's Candide, Sterne's Tristam Shandy.... Salman Rushdie, it seems to me, is very much a latter day member of their company." -- New York Times Book Review

About the author

SALMAN RUSHDIE is the author of fourteen novels--including Luka and the Fire of Life; Grimus; Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker); Shame; The Satanic Verses; Haroun and the Sea of Stories; The Moor's Last Sigh; The Ground Beneath Her Feet; Fury; Shalimar the Clown; The Enchantress of Florence; Two Years, Eight Months, and Twenty-Eight Nights; The Golden House; and Quichotte--and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of non-fiction--Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, and Step Across This Line--and coedited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.