The Satanic Verses

Rating:
Summary: I did not get it, or maybe it really is bad?
Review: Never has there been so much international outrage on the subject of a single literary novel as with The Satanic Verses (1988) of Salman Rushdie. Reason enough for me to dive in the unknown and taste a little bit of controversy by reading this cursed work. This is likely to be the number one reason why people start reading Rushdie's book, proving that censorship has actually the opposite effect on sales. Why didn't the Ayatollah think about that, he?

The Satanic Verses is a by times fascinating, sometimes even funny mix of adventure, dreams and myths, facts and fiction. It playfully juggles with religion, philosophy and literature. Central is the struggle between good and evil, personified by two men who miraculously survive, without a single scratch, a drop of 10 kilometers out of the sky, following an exploded airplane towards the city of London. Both men try to go their own way in search of their identity. But nothing is more complicated, it seems.

The basic concept of the book is quite ingenious, but the implementation is a bit lacking behind. I had to start reading this book about three times before I was able to finish it, every time being disappointed by another part that was excelling in being boring as -seems appropriate- hell. Once I even threw it against the wall out of pure frustration, serious. With any other boring book a reader would quickly decide to simply stop reading and burn the book -seems appropriate too-, but the problem with this specific one is that it constantly gives you the impression that something really remarkable is bound to happen. Seduced by some inaccessible prospect you keep saying to yourself: "maybe next chapter I will start to understand what Rushdie means with this" and you flip over to the next page. I hope I do not completely spoil the book for you by giving away that the end just does not deliver at all.

There are some readable chapters though, like the one where a whole village starts on a crusade for Mecca and hopes that the Gods will split the sea to give them a way through. Though in the end it might not be worth the trouble. I must admit that I may not be very familiar with the Muslim culture to completely understand what this book is all about, but then again the people who do have this knowledge have maybe already burned their copy.

Rating:
Summary: A story visible but unseen
Review: I bought the Satanic Verses when the book came out as a gesture of solidarity with the author, not necessarily to read it or even expect that over the years it would become the most-oft read book I own. I don't want to offer the ubiquitous Joyce comparison, but the scope of the book is certainly Joycean. In the many intermingling storylines I discovered (over many reads) two overarching ideas, the first being the clash of spheres: the clash between cultures, migration, adaptation and repulsion of other peoples' influences on the one hand, but also the clash between the secular (Mirza) and the divine (Ayesha), the vulgar (Gibreel) and the cultured (Saladin). In these conflicts Rushdie manages to first offer all coping strategies as viable, just to let them fail one by one. There is no way out of the quandary of being an immigrant, we are forever trapped in the cultural baggage we were born with.

The second idea is about the birth of ideas themselves, especially those (like Islam) strong enough to change the world. Rushdie asks two questions of those ideas. The first one, conspicuously: What kind of an idea are you? One that compromises and finds a niche or one that doesn't and that will most likely fail, but in one out of a hundred times will change the world. Gibreel then inquires about the second question but is advised to answer the first one first. Only much later and almost in an aside the second question is asked: What will you do if you win? This set of questions about idealism and corruption is applicable to all kinds of revolutions both political (Russia, Cuba, the U.S. and its foreign policy) and religious (Christianity and Islam in particular), but it becomes especially powerful when Rushdie asks the second question of Mohamed ('Mahound') after his victorious return to Mecca ('Jahilia'). Ostensibly the fatwa on Rushdie was issued because of his vulgar description of the prophet's life (his twelve wives as whores), but the more powerful and insidious idea was that Mohamed started rewriting the Quran as a rulebook to further his own goals--the Satanic Verses. Religion, Rushdie seems to imply, succeeds only as the combination of superhuman ideals proliferated by ruthless actions.

Both ideas reappear frequently in the different realms of the story, both in the 'real' worlds of the Sufyan and the Cone families, the 'dream' worlds of Gibreel and Rosa Diamond and the worlds inbetween like Saladin's diabolic ordeal, and they mercilessly guide the protagonists to their respective faiths. While the theme of the book seems to be pessimistic, Rushdie's great talent is to raise doubt and show the victory of faith (in the Ayesha pilgrimage) at the same time. This book does not give an answer about the purpose of our existence, but sometimes the art is to ask the right questions.

Rating:
Summary: An almost overwhelming, but deeply pleasurable task.
Review: __________
Fluff or Not? NOT
__________

Similar to several other reviewers I freely admit a lack of robust understanding of all that went on in Rushdie's 'Verses'. However, I do feel compelled to give it a full star rating. There were poetic gems that left me breathless, whole sections that still have me bewildered, and characters whom I didn't fully understand but who had moments with which I identified, and overall appreciated. This book, for me, warrents a second go-through.

+: poetry, wildly immaginative, fun characters, crazy circumstances, great language
-: tough going sometimes, big words, you need to know some background, you can get totally lost

Rating:
Summary: What the hell was that?
Review: I just finished this book. Crap! No wonder they killed the guy who wrote it. Read something else...like Alice Through the Looking Glass or Harry Potter. Much easier and a lot more fun. Plus, you can read it to children unlike this monstrasity.

Rating:
Summary: Awsome read
Review: I believe the author is brilliant! If you want to expand your intellect this book wil certainly do the job. On another note, Salman Rushdie would also approve of "Islam Exposed" a book whose author also received death threats.

Good work sir! I hope all is well with you!

Rating:
Summary: A bit scattered and hard to read
Review: I had so looked forward to reading this book, but I was greatly disappointed. I didn't like the author's style, and I had trouble staying focused on the book. I am not especially well-read in Indian culture, and I got the impression I was missing a lot of the subtext. I also had trouble figuring out what was going on for, oh, the first 80 or so pages. It seems like the type of book where you have to know a lot about the subject or at least the context in which it's written before you ever read it.

Rating:
Summary: And the point would be?
Review: I don't feel entirely comfortable reviewing this book, because I am not sure how much of it I understood. Another reviewer remarked that it is necessary to be well-versed in Islam to understand the ways in which Rushdie satirizes it, and that seems to be correct. My knowledge of Islam is probably better than the average American's, but it's still pretty rudimentary, and I don't doubt that that interfered with my enjoyment of the book.

That said, I think that even for me, this book should have held together rather better than it did. The writing is often very skillful, as I would expect from Rushdie, but what he is writing about is problematic. The themes are often confused, and the different subplots usually seem to be unrelated. The characters, though they show occaisonal flashes of credibility, generally seemed unrealistic and uninteresting, at least in comparison to those in some of Rushdie's other books.

Often when I start to read I highly regarded book, I get bored quickly at first, but am hooked once I pass a certain critical point. I expected that to happen with this book. It never did. I'm reluctant to give a wholly negative review because I think there may be a good book under here somewhere, but in order to find out I would have to reread it, and I'm not confident that the additional time investment would be worth my while.

Midnight's Children, one of Rushdie's earlier works, is one of my favorite books, but this book does not come near it in quality as far as I am concerned. There is probably some group to whom The Satanic Verses would appeal, but I am not it, and you may not be either.

Rating:
Summary: Physical v Ethereal
Review: Satanic verses contained two main story lines. One in the physical world and one in the world of Gibreel Farishtas dreams. The latter storyline could be the workings of Gibreel Farishta's mind or the Spiritual realm. Which one is for the reader to decide. I could write seperate reviews for each storyline. The one in the real world was, to say the least, not very nice. The human element was in the gutter and typical of the lower end of society. The realm of Farishtas dreamworld, I found to be quite fascinating and would have enjoyed this part of the novel on it's own. I intend to re-read the sections of the novel in Farishtas dream world. On the first reading, I found it difficult to seperate the dream world from the real world. I have read in other reviews that an understanding of Hindi and Urdu languages is essential for the humour. I have none of these so must assume that I missed out there. I really enjoyed the parts relevant to Islamic history but must investigate further to seperate the truth from the profane. I would say that a knowledge of Islamic history is essential for understanding this part of the story. Anyone without this would not know why Ayatolla Khomeini issued the death threat on Rushdie. In the beginning, I did not want to continue with book but thought that, owing to all the fuss that surrounded it, I must continue. In the end, I am glad that I did, but only for the sake of Gibreel's dreams. The real world story, I could have easily missed. Unfortunately, it is necessary to read the garbage so as not to miss the interesting bits. I rated this book with three stars. If I could divide the story up I would give the real world story only one star but the dream world story five.

Rating:
Summary: No translation for a book written in a foreign language
Review: I was neither repelled nor elated by this book. On the surface it was easy to read. In fact there was something familiar about it...

I asked myself, 'Where have I read a book like this before?'
And I answered myself: _Finnegan's Wake_.

_Finnegan's Wake_ was the height of cultural obscurity, while borrowing from multiple other cultures. Irish brogue and myth give the keys to understanding it. They say that a culture's humor is the height of its obscurity; both of these books reverse that idea and say, 'Cultural obscurity is the height of humor'. Some people have quizzed this book as being ridiculously unhumorous. To me it looks like an attempt at the same sort of comedic obscurity as that shown in _Finnegan's Wake_. Just remember the point where one of Saladin's cohorts shouts, (loosely paraphrased) "I'm not stupid you know! I've read Finnegan's Wake!" And just as in the book by Joyce, we are led through a series of obscure transformations, wild re-creations of mythological and legendary subjects and startling images which superficially appear disconnected from the rest of the book.

The question as far as I'm concerned is: was it as good as Finnegan's Wake?

Well, no. It was too comprehensible, too easy to understand. Perhaps unbelievably for those who complained of its incomprehensibility, it should have been denser. No reader should have been able to flit through it like a butterfly on holiday. In this way, I think it would have taken on its own life. I'm an American and should have found this even harder to understand than the aforementioned book by Joyce. Perhaps confusingly, deliberate obscurity for the sake of illumination might be, well, more illuminating. I finished the book feeling that I had learned some superficial things but that, unlike with Joyce, my experience had been almost totally British.

By writing in English instead of Urdu, Mr. Rushdie's apparent attempt to write a distinctly personal book has been partly hampered by his desire to bridge a culture gap. Is English improperly structured for the expression of his ideas? Or was he mostly interested in communicating with English language speakers? By distancing himself from his own culture, did he dilute the impact of this book? Is he merely an ambassador to the West who happens to write? Or is he a sort of colonial, invading Ellowen Dellowen with his prose?

In my humble opinion, Mr. Rushdie did not manage to resolve all of these questions within the book itself. This is not a book which shows -how- or -why- nationalistic confusion exists, but merely that it does. He is a master, no doubt. But this is not a work of genius.

Rating:
Summary: Satanic Verses from Bobs Books
Review: The book arrived within 5 days of my order.This was a very good turnaround time. Bobs Books is a good source that you can trust.I was very pleased at the condition of the book, it by far exceeded the comment of excellent condition. I will buy from Bobs Books again. Prices are in line with others, and if all his discriptions of his items are like the one I bought, Bobs Books will keep the mailman very busy!!