Salman Rushdie is a weird man. Sometimes he would write things like, “…Chamcha was going down head first, in the recommended position for babies entering the birth canal…” and “…Saladin, like a bloody lettuce, I ask you…” and he used a lot of big words I’ve never seen like “orotund” and “obsolescent” and the whole time, I kept thinking, ‘wow, Salman Rushdie made a cameo appearance in the Bridget Jones’s Diary movie and he has funny eyebrows like Jack Nicholson.’

Um. Right. This book was not an enjoyable read for me. It was dense and too long. I had to force myself to read a little bit every day because I kept picking up other books to read instead of this one. Once I made it past the first 100 pages, it became more interesting but it was still a dredge to read. I thought most of the scenes are way too drawn out. I’d have appreciated this book a whole lot more if the parts that involved Saladin and Chamcha were thinned down by a third and the parts that involved Mahound and his band of merry men and gals was beefier.

So anyway, unless you are a brainiac (and you’re probably not so quit giving yourself airs) and/or are comfortable with several facets of Indian culture and also have a comfortable working knowledge of Islam, you’re setting yourself up for failure if you decide to just sit down and noncommittally read The Satanic Verses. I don’t think that’s possible. I came close to quitting several times but didn’t, thanks largely in part to this: http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~brians/anglo...

The document is almost 100 pages long but the way I see it, if you’re actually going to put forth the commitment to read this dang book with the intention of understanding what the hell is going on, what’s an extra 100 pages? Especially if they’ll actually help you capture and understand some of the non-transparent characters and events that fill this book. It is divided up by chapters. I read the notes before starting each new chapter and referred back as necessary.

Obviously scanning this document while I was reading the book added to the length of time it took to work my way through this book. However, I feel no shame whatsoever in admitting that this book would have been so far beyond my level of comprehension if I hadn’t had the help that I don’t even care.

I'm relieved to be done with this book.

Actually,I have marked it as not to read.I never intend to read it,but it is somehow showing up as read.

Anyway,I wanted to write a few lines about it.It brought a fatwa on Rushdie's head,from Khomeini.Rushdi went away into hiding for years and years.

He set out to be delibertely provocative and very offensive,on a very sensitive subject.Coming from a Muslim background himself,he must have been aware that this was going to create big time trouble and controversy,and he succeeded in doing that.

I remember it was 1989.Massive rioting erupted in Pakistan against the book.10,000 people took part,six protesters were killed.Islamabad became a battle ground.

The irony is that Rushdie stayed alive,others were actually killed because of his book.And there was rioting and protest in several Muslim countries.He became a hated figure among Muslims.

Rushdie was all over the papers,and not for the right reasons.He asked for trouble and got it.However,it was still a lot of publicity and it made him famous worldwide.

Booker Prize judges still loved it,though it lost to another book in the final round.

So,this one is not to read.Nor am I interested in any of his other books,no matter how clever a writer he is supposed to be.

هذه الرواية فضيحة مزدوجة .. فضيحة للحضارة الغربية التي افرزت هذا المسخ واحتضنته .. وفضيحة أيضاً بالنسبة لعلمائنا الذين اكتفوا بالسب والشتم ولم يهتم أحدهم ببيان عناصر السقوط في الرواية فناً وشكلاً ومضموناً
لم أجد غير رد للكبير أحمد ديدات الذي تطرق إلى بنية الرواية والتي قال أنها مقتبسة من عمل أدبي آخر
لكن لم أجد أحد من العلماء تطرق للناحية العقائدية وقصة الغرانيق التي آثرها رشدي
في الرواية
والتي حاول آثبات صحتها ليدحض بها نبؤة سيدنا محمد صلى الله عليه وسلم
جميع��م أكتفوا بالسب والشتم ولم نُقدم للغرب رد منطقي

I loved Midnight’s Children and Shame but this one was an exercise in exasperation which I should have left well alone instead of becoming intrigued again by its fearsome bloody reputation as a book that kills people. There were three reasons why I very strongly disliked this book.

THE TIRESOME STRUCTURE

It could be most of this book is a meticulous account of the dreams aka visions of mostly one character. And he has dreams within dreams. The as it were real-world plot inches along like a slow bicycle race with this person’s back story and that person’s back story and the dreams jump around as dreams do so this whole cumbersome multi-layered affair seems to be going nowhere for many pages.

THE UNFUNNY COMIC VOICE

Cajoling, supercilious, sneering, mocking, silly, making constant quips, it exhausts and finally aggravates. Here he is wittering on about angels:

The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God’s will one day muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills a la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, of the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual etcetera. And hey presto, end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified, turn them into instruments and they’ll play your harpy tune.

The above passage raises another big problem – who exactly is talking here? This narrator, is he actually The Devil as is implied early on? *

THE EARLY HISTORY OF ISLAM ACCORDING TO SALMAN RUSHDIE

A whole lot of this book is taken up with a detailed sequence of dream-narratives that dispense with the dream framework and become a comic-ironic history of the life of a religious leader who is never called Mohammed but referred to as either The Prophet or as Mahound, an insulting medieval name for Mohammed. (It came from the French Mahun which was a contraction of Mahomet. Well, so the internet tells me.) So we get the twisty tale of how Mahound eventually got rid of the polytheism of the city of Jahilia and how Islam, here called Submission, became accepted as the true religion. Well, what could possibly be offensive about that, since that is what actually happened? Only everything.

As an example of how detailed this gets, there’s a whole chapter about Mahound making a deal with the city boss to accept three of the female local gods into his religion in return for the city of Jahilia accepting him as The Prophet. The boss says you can’t just throw out all these three hundred gods, the people won’t stand for it. Well, says Mahound, how about if I say the people can keep these three gods but we’re gonna re-brand them as angels. Okay, says the city boss, that sounds like a deal.

Then of course there is the notorious section where the sex workers in the largest brothel in Jahilia pretend for their clients’ amusement to be the wives of Mahound. They are fooling around and being deliberately offensive, and gradually they take on the characters of Mahound’s wives. This is the section which earned Rushdie the famous fatwa but it is by no means the only part which might strike a Muslim as blasphemous. The scribe Salman (hmmm, same name as our author) gets the job of writing down Mahound’s words and frankly he gets fed up of it:

When he sat at The Prophet’s feet, writing down rules rules rules, he began, surreptitiously, to change things.

And strangely, the Prophet does not notice. Salman says:

So there I was, actually writing the Book, or rewriting, anyway, polluting the word of God with my own profane language. But good heavens, if my poor words could not be distinguished from the Revelation of God’s own Messenger, then what did that mean?

SOMETHING OF A MISCALCULATION

Speaking as an atheistic liberal, I have no desire to get anyone mad at Rushdie all over again. But there is no doubt he was playing around with the most sensitive ideas about Islam here. It’s possible he thought a brilliantly complex post-modern metanarrative aimed squarely at Booker Prize judges, London Review of Books subscribers and the like would fall outside of the purview of the Muslim world, and he could, as it were, hide his subversive fabulation in the spotlight. In this he was catastrophically mistaken.

The intricate obsessive re-telling of the early history of Islam is the main reason I had to give this up : it’s deadly boring for a non-religious reader. You don’t know if this or that name or incident is suppose to be a caricature of history or an ironical comment or a plain historical fact. Reading The Satanic Verses turns into an exercise in frustration – who is supposed to be an angel? What’s an angel anyway? Is it the Devil who is telling me this whole shaggy god story anyway? Did I care once?

Salman Rushdie is one of our greatest authors but in The Satanic Verses he was barking up the wrongest possible tree.

*

*This narrator says to the reader : “Who am I? Let’s put it this way : who has the best tunes?”

I had to give myself the whole night to think of how I was going to rate this. I really liked the book but I also found it confusing. Yes, I know it's magical realism and the confusion is normal ;)

And now, about that part where I describe the book? Yeah, I don't really know what happened in it. Two guys fall from a plane as it explodes from a terrorist bomb. They miraculously survive and over the course of the novel they take on the characteristics of an angel and devil. Or do they? I think they do. Or I did. And then I wondered. And then I thought so again. But...

The story is also about India, what it means to be Muslim in India, what it means to be Indian in England, and race relations in England. This last was difficult for me because all of the race relations issues are still things that are happening in our present day society but this book was published 30 years ago.

What ultimately decided me in favor of five stars is the fact that this is a book that will stick with me for a very long time. It's one that will make me ponder and cogitate over the years, and I think in the end it gives me added insight into what it's like to be someone other than a nearly 40 year old white American female.

Sebbene sia affascinante leggere Rushdie, devo ammettere che non è mai facile calarsi pienamente nella sua realtà e nel suo mondo, anche se ne sei arricchito ogni volta.
L'eterna lotta tra Bene e Male trova qui il suo miglior apice rappresentato dalle figure di Gibreel Farishta, attore del cinema e Saladin Chamcha, uomo dalle mille voci degli spot pubblicitari, che incarnano perfettamente questa dicotomia.
Una lotta e battaglia che vede tutti coinvolti e il cui esito non è così scontato come possa sembrare. Tra realtà e fantasia, intorno a loro ruotano tutta una serie di personaggi, quali Ayesha, Ailee e tantissimi altri che rendono ancora più caratteristico il tutto.
Una opera non facile infarcita di termini della cultura islamica che non risultano essere di facile comprensione, soprattutto se non si conosce quel mondo.
Uno dei libri maggiormente discussi di sempre che fa indignare, riflettere, ma anche stare male. Un romanzo che scatena tantissime reazioni e risulta, proprio per questo, ancora più affascinante e superlativo.

Чудно је сазнање да је књига по којој је неки аутор познат, која је његов синоним, између којих стоји знак једнакости, заправо књига која није његово уметнички највредније дело. Индијски књижевник Салман Ружди добио је Букера за књигу Деца поноћи, неки ће рећи антологијско дело са фантастичним описима Бомбаја, живота на улицама тог нама егзотичног града, односима који владају негде где је мало ко од нас био и судбине миленијумске деце рођене у поноћ на прелазу из другог у трећи миленијум. Деца поноћи донела су велику славу, али су донела и прве претње, религиозне природе. Бритак на језику, вешт у паковању мисли у алегоријске повоје, запаковао је скривену критику света у коме је одрастао и запаковао себи погледе пуне презира, а неретко и мржње. А онда су дошли стихови или ајети, произишли из пакла или џехенета, писани руком сатане или шејтана, они су донели оно што су Деца поноћи и најавила, мржњу, претње смрћу и на крају фатву даривану од верског вође исламског света Ајатолаха Хомеинија. Фатва даје слободу сваком исламском вернику да по божјој правди може да убије писца без страха од греха. Више од тридесет година прошло је од издања књиге која је довела до убиства јапанског преводиоца, али и разбијеног излога Просветине књижаре у Сарајеву у чијем је декору стајала управо ова сатанска књига. Поставља се питање шта толико страшно пише у овој књизи пуној ироније, сатире, алегорије и оштре критике света огрезлог у религијску заслепљеност, па да један књижевник, не политичар или официр, буде осуђен на смрт?
Један од главних ликова ове књиге јесте Џибрил у хришћанском свету познатији као Габријел или архангел Гаврило који на самом почетку пада са неба, као један од двојице преживелих у терористичком нападу на авион. Индијски емигранти падају са неба а један од њих је Џибрил Фаришта боливудска звезда, која се преображава у анђела Габријела, док се преживели пријатељ у несрећи Саладин преображава у самог ђавола, под њима је Ламанш, Лондон, цео свет. Џихад на делу, девице на небу, смрт недужних, али живот се наставља у џенету, под божјим скутима, рајским одајама и храни и миловањима и зато суза нема, већ само поделе на јин и јанг, таму и светло, зло и добро. Пандорина кутија је отворена. Док је Џибрилов преображај у анђела одраз менталног преображаја и болести Саладинов преображај и кретање на улицама Лондона указује нам на живот индијских емиграната који никада у западном свету неће бити прихваћени док не одбаце и последњи оквир индијске културе, заувек ће остати онај који је другачији, који изазива страх и на кога ће западни свет пгледати са страхом у очима. Поред указивања на последице и злочин колонијализације, Ружди указује у свом свету препуном магијског реализма и на проблем исламског света, који се пред крај двадесетог века преображава у расцеп који одваја две струје исламског света, али и две струје читаве светске религије, оне који су посвећени и религијом незаслепљени и оне фундаменталне, који би убијали зарад бога и у име бога. Овде је писац повукао свој најјачи потез и у игру убацио пророка Мухамеда да приповеда своју причу у друштву анђела Џибрила. Друштво рајских девица, њих свих четрдесет, на земљи скривених у шаторима достојним султана, који скривају блуд и изопаченост, проституцију невиних дева скривену иза тканина и склоњених маски. Маске је скинуо он, добио фатву као дар, а описивао је не само Мухамеда, већ све оне који са ножем у зубима и са бомбастичним направама око струка пружају дарове и даривају их невиним људима, онима које није брига ко је чији и одакле је, али који су допустили да се плаше различитости, оних који су дозволили да се мудри ућуте и склоне у страну, а они гласовити ставе на пијадестал да запале масе, да дижу устанке и буне, џихаде и крсташке ратове и бацају фатве како им се прохте. Критика западног и индијског света из којег је потекао, критика материјализма и религијских догми, а не увреда обичног света, реч која је гађала појединце и нашла право место, али за собом повукла и милионе следбеника спремних да у љутњи наплате оно што нису ни читали, баш попут оних који су против Граса, Хандкеа или Руждија.
„Они који се данас најгласније противе ’Сатанским стиховима’ мишљења су да ће их мешање са другачијом културом неизбежно ослабити и уништити њихову властиту. Ја сам супротног мишљења. Роман ’Сатански стихови’ слави хибридност, нечистоћу, мешање, преображај који произлази из нових и неочекиваних комбинација људских бицћа, култура, идеја, политика, филмова, песама. Он ужива у укрштању и плаши се апсолутизма Чистога. Меланге, папазјанија, мало овог и мало оног је како ново долази на свет. Масовна миграција даје свету велику могућност и ја сам је покушао пригрлити.“

When the Danish Cartoon crisis erupted, I immediately went out and bought a copy of this book... though I'm afraid I didn't then go and read it in public places, as I should have done. It is indeed extravantly disrespectful towards the Prophet, as everyone knows. What's somewhat less well-known is that it's also very disrespectful towards a figure who sure looks a lot like the late Ayatollah Khomeini. I wonder whether this wasn't the real reason for the fatwa? No doubt it has already been discussed at great length...

I'm doing my best not to think "Here goes Rushdie again." I never read this one before although I read every other book he ever wrote. And now, to fill the gap, I am stuck with the last unread jewel, except that it's somehow lackluster because Salman doesn't age or accumulate well. I mean, the more you read him the more he sounds the same. And has this ever happened to you: that you discover in a writer just a wisp of too much wit and it's wit that bores you?
Yes, I'm reading on, with strange compulsive patience that some readers acquire... Maybe we think, it'll get better or it'll reach a moment when all the nonsense will have become justified.
And then, there is the miserable expository didactic style. You don't believe me? Ok, how about this: "Now, however, change had begun to feel painful; the arteries of the possible had begun to harden."
Arteries of the possible?!? No, really, is that writing?
Or this: "...she had no confidence at all, and every moment she spent in the world was full of panic, so she smiled and smiled and maybe once a week she locked the door and shook and felt like a husk, like an empty peanut-shell, a monkey without a nut."
A monkey without a nut? Now how exactly do you imagine such a character? And is she a husk or a monkey... Or is it both?
Amendment, if you'll allow me: finally, I reached the end and must say, almost despite myself, that it is worth the effort. What happens? Various disconnected and initially confusing strands of the story come together, more or less. There is, in any case, a feeling of wholeness and an idea that seems to animate it. And it is in this "main" idea that I recognize Rushdie and realize that he has always been faithful to himself. I think he tries, here as elsewhere, to address the question of faith, but in a sense much broader than the mere religious one. What does it mean to believe something so strongly that the fiction comes to be real or reality is denied and becomes a miracle? This question matters as much to literature as it does to religion and here the two overlap. This I find to be a very powerful achievement of The Satanic Verses: to ask you when and how you believe and what the consequences of that belief may be... Or when and how you don't believe and what the consequences of that unbelief may be... So my favorite aspect of the book: the steady, intricate focus on fiction -- its reality and its delusions.

Salman Rushdie uses excessive language to cloud discordant plots, has a part-time occupation of scouring the news to write op-eds about evil Muslim organizations he reads about, and is obsessed with celebrity.

Rushdie strangles his plot in The Satanic Verses by hitching every development to a forced and unnecessarily long description or metaphor. His overwriting prevents the development of narrative flow. He even returns to more metaphors about the same topic sometimes, like when he writes about stuff falling out of the plane in the first chapter again and again. It's not hard to read but it is distracting and he uses ingratiating language. He doesn't sound confident in his writing.

"Yaaaaaa! I'm falling out of an aeroplane! Wa-waaajaaaa!" The annoyance you now feel is the same feeling I felt when I started reading The Satanic Verses a couple of days ago. I don't oppose metaphors and I don't even oppose varied styles and formats of writing, so long as they are effective. There is a difference between figurative language and purple prose. Look at this punctuation, pg. 15: "Oh: don't forget: she saw her after she died." Ok: Thanks: I won't forget. Oh: and Rushdie: I don't like kitschy conversational prose.

"It was the death of God." pg. 16. What a way to start a paragraph! God just died? Aw man, false alarm, it's just more crap like: "It was part of his magic persona that he succeeded in crossing religious boundaries without giving offence." Oh it was? I'll keep that in mind about the character from now on. Nah, I'll probably forget it. It doesn't matter though because it didn't mean anything to begin with. At least he threw in a book recommendation, Akbar and Birbal, in that paragraph to make it worth something. It's out-of-place. He's certainly proven to me that he's a master of the Orient at this point, though. (Someone told me not to use the term "orientalist" because it was "stale" so I'll use master of the Orient instead.) He also gives a shout-out to Hinduism and Buddhism in this paragraph. Just name-drop those religions as fast as you can and move on, I guess. No Satanic influence there.

Rushdie also relies on intentionally jumbled (what'sitcalledwhenyoudothisstupidthing?) words and run-on sentences. This sucks. I remember writing words like that in elementary school because I thought it was funny. It's not funny. It's cutesy at best. I don't like reading over 500 pages worth of giddy and bubbly writing just to get through a stupid plot.

His realism is magical because he relies on controversial fairy tales to carry themes he is either too lazy or too incompetent to create through reality. His magical realism makes me feel like I'm watching what I imagine an Enya music video would look like. He's hiding a spastic plot behind mysticism. He fails to employ that mysticism to do anything more interesting than a competent author could do with the real and concrete.

According to RUSHDORK, I mean Rushdie, Satan interrupted the divine dictation of the Koran. It was supposed to go from the Archangel Gabriel's mouth to Mohammad's ear and then to he People. Satan stepped in like the jackass in a game of Telephone who gets the message wrong on purpose. Later, Islamic ninjas covered up Satan's interference and Mohammad's mistake. This is the plot hook of The Satanic Verses. Mohammad was influenced by the Devil even though the Koran has no trace of the two goddesses introduced by Zoroaster. How the hell does that work? Was Mohammad like "My utterances at dawn: t'was Satan. Sorry, guys." Maybe that happened -- but Rushdie never explains this. But it was probably, as a huge amount of speculative western scholarship has "uncovered" in the years since Rushdie's inflammatory book was published, just a fight amongst a few Muslims who accused a few other Muslims of attempting, in compiling What the Prophet Said, to add their own idols, who they wanted to be included in religious scripture. THAT HAPPENED COUNTLESS TIMES DURING THE FORMATION OF THE KORAN and western historians, in all their ignorance of Islam, got involved, so when they saw Muslims accusing each other, they took the chance to say "they're fighting about Satan's influence." It was a few phrases that got chopped in the cutting room of the Koran, but were scooped off the floor. MAYBE. Someone called them "satanic," probably a westerner, as Daniel Pipes speculates, and it was on. Rushdie was ready to write.

Misappropriating history with such lazy disregard for truth or context, with such an ignorance that turns condescending by transmission -- this is the hallmark of Dan Browns, not great authors. It's as though Brown seized on some of the more inflammatory screeds from the Arian Heresy and wrote a book that went like, "Aha! The Knights Templar were time travelers!" It's not good fiction. That this intentionally inflammatory claptrap rose to the level of world-renowned Great Art speaks more to the global prejudice against Islamic theology than to to the Satanic Verses' literary worth!

If you believe that Gabriel spoke Allah's divine words to Mohammad, I bet you don't also think that Mohammad received false words from Satan, do you?

If you believe that Gabriel did not speak Allah's divine words to Mohammad, I bet you also don't think that Mohammad received false words from Satan, do you?
Anyone?

The rest of this review has very little to do with The Satanic Verses but it does have to do with Rushdie:

Rushdie lives a pampered celebrity life now that he's no longer hunted by hundreds of assassins. He's an English knight, so maybe he'll fulfill his fantasy and go to the Holy Land to vanquish Muslims, just the bad ones though, as he is so adept at finding. Another review on Goodreads said that he had a cameo in Bridget Jones's Diary. That's lame. Sir Rushdie came out of hiding by walking on stage at a U2 concert. I didn't know he was a rock star, wow. We get it, you really like attention. He teaches English now at Emory University, far away from where the following treacherous Islamists lurk. Here are some thoughtful articles he's written:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peo...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/opi...
http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comm...

Someone email Sean Hannity and just set up the interview already! Islam can't take this informed and logical onslaught much longer, Salman! Let it live!

He's been married four times. I'm cool with that... I live in the U.S. so I know that judging someone for that it wrong. That must sting Rushdie's massive ego a bit. Maybe he just doesn’t care. A few parting shots:

He was most recently married to a model who poses nude, is decades younger than him, sits interviews covering how she loves certain parts of her body, repeatedly proclaims that she isn't boastful, and is a judge on a cooking show. Spare me the whole "EVERYONE would want that in his life!" Here's some hubris on display from her steroidal celebrity Facebooky page:

"'Being married to a giant cultural figure like Salman Rushdie, I want
to earn my seat at the table,' she says."

Why stop at Rushdie's table? Why not surpass him and become The Greatest Human Being to Ever Live? Her authorship includes a cookbook called Easy Exotic. Too many jokes there.

"إننا لا نثبت أن العالم هو مكان حقيقي إلا عندما نموت فيه"

n


وقبل أن تدخل لتقرأ الرواية وتتفاجأ بأسلوبها, فالرواية مكتوبة بتقنية أدبية تسمة "تيار الوعي", أو "تداعي الذاكر", حيث تنطلق الأحداث ضبابية غير متسلسلة أو مترابطة ليعبّر بها الكاتب عن وجهة نظره.


الرواية مسلية في معظم أجزائها, والترجمة ممتازة لمترجم مجهول.


آية الله الخميني أعلن عن جائزة خمسة مليون دولار لقتل الكاتب, ولا أظنها لأجل النبي, بل لأجل أنه شعر أن الكاتب احتقره عندما ذكره في سطر وحيد شبهه فيه بالنبي محمد,


اسم بلدة الحجاج "تيتليبر" قرأتها لأول مرة "تليتبيز", ووجدت بعدها أن إسم "تليتبيز" استهواني أكتر, وشعرت أنه لا داعي لنطق الكلمة صحيحة, فاسم قرية تليتبيز له جرس ومعنى أفضل بكتير عندي.

"إن بحرا تجبر على إرتياده .. فهو أسوأ من بئر يحرم عليك مائه"

n

دي مقالة بتعرض قضية الآيات الشيطانية اللي ذكرها الكاتب عرضا في الكتاب و اللي اتسمت على اسمه : الآيات الشيطانية في القرآن

وأياً كانت نتيجة الاختلاف على الآيات الشيطانية, فأعمال العنف والهمجية التي صدرت كرد فعل على الكتاب تظل أعمال عنف وهمجية لا مبرر لها.

"The quintessence of the struggle between the human and spiritual
SOY: 10+10+10=10

This novel knocks you down and immediately immerses you in its pages, not giving you the opportunity to tear yourself away from what is happening until you turn the last page.

It was undoubtedly scary to approach this work, fearing that the text would turn out to be confusing and full of various allusions that the modern Russian reader might simply not understand. Fortunately, the translator did an incredible job and accompanied the text with a (sometimes unnecessarily) detailed commentary. But it will also be important to note that one admires the poetic nature of Rushdie's own language. This is not a dry text; it is a real epic tale, where the author makes the human and the spiritual meet face to face.

The novel is an excellent example of magical realism and reading - intentionally or not - one draws parallels with Milorad Pavic. And the unchanging dreams of the main characters too are a direct inheritance from Mikhail Bulgakov, however the author himself does not deny this. I want to emphasise the originality of the novel, its subtle humour and universal sadness. It's amazing how both long-familiar and newly learnt stories flourish here.

In the book one inevitably deigns to find something that will deeply offend religious sentiment, although I am sure that those need to find such offence always will. Nevertheless, a number of facts are presented historically quite correctly, and a number are fabrications of the author himself. At the same time, even the translator emphasizes the deep spirituality of Rushdie himself (which becomes noticeable towards the end of the book).

In a land as ancient as England, there is no room for new stories.
To say that the book is not easy to read is an understatement, though it is nonetheless interesting. "Satanic Verses" is not so easy to skim through, sipping seagulls; everything is more serious here. In fact, once upon a time I had already read this book, or rather, it fell into my hands from my dad, who, perhaps, was tempted by the hype surrounding the novel, and at the time I was too young to appreciate it. Now I want to renew in my memory the work that caused the fatwa calling on Muslims to execute all those who were related to the publishing of the novel (and Salman Rushdie, of course, in the first instance).

Question: What is the opposite of faith?
Not disbelief. It’s too final, confident, closed. It's also a kind of faith.
But here’s my doubt.
So, after a terrorist attack, two Indian actors fall from a plane: Saladin Chamcha and Jibrail Farishta. Chamcha, who emigrated to Britain a long time ago, was married to an Englishwoman, but by the winds of fate was turned into a devil. Meanwhile the popular actor Farishta turns out to be the incarnation of the archangel Jibrail. And the plot rushed, leading the author to the execution list. In general, Mr. Rushdie, as I understand him, is a bit of a thrill-seeker, teasing the whole Islamic world through his writing, but myself wouldn’t be able to do the same.

If a person is not sure of his essence, how can he know whether he is good or bad?
The translation of the book is a song of its own; and one must have nerves of steel to wade through it.”