The Satanic Verses (Bestselling Backlist)

Rating:
Summary: The Master of Understatement.
Review: Soon I was playing a game with a friend - a wonderful game I created called, "Opening Sentences for a Novel." Inspired, of course, by Salman's Rushdie's Satanic Verses.

The book is a parabalic.. hallucinatory journey.. a discovery of soul. An experiment with religion. A creative piece of brilliant work where Salman merely asks a few honest and insightful questions.

So, one part of the journey.. (and only one part, mind you)... was about Mahound (aka Mohammad), and his tormented battle with the Archangel Gabriel... Within the Quran it explains that Mohammad wrestled with Gabriel.. and gabriel spoke the truth... The book begins with two indian men falling out of the night sky into the English sea... Wow.. what a beginning! It begins with them in perpetual fall... one man is terrified... the other man is singing jovially... and as they fall... they carry on a conversation... and Salman makes the comment: Let's face it; it was impossible for them to have heard one another, much less conversed and also competed thus in song. Accelerating towards the planet, atmosphere roaring around them, how could they? But let's face this, too: they did.

Anyway, when they fall... the two men begin to slowly change.... one begins to transform into an angel... the other, into a hoofed goat.. with horns.. aka.. the devil... now, the man who's transforming into an angel... begins to have these... hallucinatory dreams... each dream.. is a continuation of the same story.... He knows that when he falls asleep again.. he's just going to pick up where he left of... and he dreams of Mahound, and in his dream, he IS Mohammad... So, Salman Rushdie concocted this brilliant scene... when Mahound wrestles with the archangel Gabriel.. and Gabriel's mouth opens.. and he speaks the truth.. The Truth, which became the Quran. But, as Salman explores this scene... he puts a twist to it... the character, Mahound.. (The dreaming Gabriel)... wonders if the Angel is actually talking.... or if he is only hearing what he wants to hear...

It's pure poetry! The muslim fundementalists didn't even bother to try to understand the theme of the book! Which wasn't at all about religion... something far more endearing to the heart. Mahound was simply one chapter. For instance... You know the second guy? The one who turns into a horned goat.. Well, one chapter is about how he ended up in the middle of the sky! Starting from his youth... So, he's like 10.. and his father's a multi-millionaire.. but very hard on his son... the father thinks he's making a man out of him. But the son just despises him...One time the son finds a wallet on the street with a wadful of british pounds.... The father snatches the wallet off him... And here's the thing... the dad has the original magic lamp of Aladdin.. as traced back through the centuries. He had aquired it through some effort. BUT he NEVER rubbed the lamp! The 10 year old can't figure out why! His dad says, "as long as it's mine, no one will rub it. When I die, it will be yours.. then you may do with it what you like." Anyway... after this.. we leave their story altogether... and explore all these other fascinating characters... Right at the end of the book... the man's father has just died... and he aquires the magic lamp. I ain't gonna tell you the twist. It's BLOODY AMAZING! You will never come across a twist like that... very very rare.

Rating:
Summary: The Satanic Verses
Review: The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie is a terrible and offensive book. It puts Islam to shame and I agree with the Iranian opinion that should have been put to death for this insulting and inane trash. Rushdie thinks that he is an enlightened writer yet one feels the stench of leftist anti religious dogma and atheism. Shame on you Rushdie for writing this sacreligious nonesense.

Rating:
Summary: What a book!
Review: This book is easily one of the most difficult books I've ever read. It took me several attempts (over a course of several years) to finally be able to get through the book. When I finally did get through the book, I got a little confused between what was reality and what was a dream. Once I was able to decipher all that, I was a little confused about why the book was banned in the U.K. (back in the 1980s) and why Rushdie has a death sentence on him. But then again, I'm not a Muslim and I really am not in any position to speak to that. In this book I really saw Rushdie speaking about any type of religious fundamentalism and not directly attacking Islam itself, but that's just my opinion. I'll probably read this book again in a couple of years and see if I can get a better grasp on all of its complex themes.

One thing I must say is that Rushdie is an amazing writer; his style is so captivating and I enjoyed reading his work very much, even if it was very challenging at first!

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Summary: a WONDERFUL book
Review: This book is incredible. Rushdie has a unique, lyrical prose style that makes this book a joy to read. The Satanic Verses deals with two men who fall from a hijacked airpane and survive. After the fall, (hmm) they undergo a series of transformations: one man, Gibreel Farishta, is changed into an archangel, while Saladin Chamcha changes into a demon. The story also deals with immigration: the loss of one's homeland and the mistreatment and bigotry with which immigrants are treated. Beyond that, Rushdie is dealing with the intertwined nature of good and evil. Where the book has been accused of blasphemy are the passages in which he opposes the black/white polarization of good and evil in organized religion. I would not recommend this book to a devout Muslim, Catholic, or any unquestioned believer in any dogmatic religion. It questions many beliefs about God and about life. However, I do not feel Rushdie is an atheist, only a believer who does not want to be told what to think. This book is a great masterpiece, second only in Rushdie's catalogue to Midnight's Children. (Well, I haven't read Ground Beneath her Feet yet, but MC is the best I've read so far.) I highly recommend this book and Salman Rushdie. I would read Midnight's Children first if you're a Rushdie newbie.

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Summary: A Calculated Blasphemy or Literature?
Review: This novel must be read with an educated mind or at least a cultural understanding of what it produced in order to benefit from its pages. It is not a simple read; in fact I found it quite needlessly lengthy and cumbersome but it just might teach you something important about the conditions of faith in other parts of the world.

As a novel, "The Satanic Verses," is an epic about human frailty and the ever present battle between good and evil. It begins in the English Channel with a crashing plane and two men who seem to fall from the sky. Gibreel Farishta, an Indian movie star, borders between a life of excess and consumption and life as an archangel who has lost his faith. It is often difficult to tell where Gibreel is really coming from. Saladin Chamcha returns from Bombay to London where he hovers between life and death as either human or a strangely metamorphosed creature resembling a devil. Neither man contains pure evil or innocent good so the struggle to live or die causes them to knock against the doors of heaven and hell with equal regard. It is a very human struggle written behind a fairy-tale idealism.

Salman Rushdie is obviously well educated and his writing borders upon snobbishness having missed the ability to relate to an audience rather than attempt to impress one. In my opinion this novel was horribly calculated in order to anger an already emotional crowd while reaching the echelons of controversy and thus further his debatable career. Had Rushdie been a truly great writer of literature he wouldn't have needed the now notorious backlash to sell his ideas. The difficulty with this novel exists in its complicated cultural references making it far too remote for an average reader to understand unless they are willing to spend a few hours educating themselves to the ways of India, the Middle East and Islamic religious practices. Rushdie writes with a frenzied chaos and forgets to reach out towards the average reader. But his writing certainly begs for a deeper understanding if in fact one actually does exist.

A few recommendations prior to taking on this novel, be sure to have at hand a dictionary, a book on Indian and Middle Eastern history, an Indian slang reference, of course the Holy Qur'an and possibly, "The Rushdie Affair," (by Daniel Pipes) to explain it all. At the minimum you must have a very vivid imagination, an extremely open and tolerant mind and finally the ultimate desire to learn something new. Rushdie's words will have your mind spinning in several directions at once maybe this pattern is purposeful to some extent, if you don't pay attention you just might miss some of the worst slights. At the core of all the controversy are a few verses that the Prophet Muhammad was supposed to have written (by some historic accounts) to please authorities so that he could continue his preaching's. These verses seem to acknowledge Meccan goddesses and allowed nobles to accept the Prophet but it also placed Islam in controversy because the entire basis of the religion is monotheistic, the Qur'an without fault and these verses placed doubt behind the entire validity of Islam if in fact they were ever considered by the Prophet. The angel Gabriel is said to have grumbled about Muhammad's actions claiming the acceptance of goddesses to be stemming from Satan himself. Thus the verses were stricken from God's word by God himself via Gabriel. Rushdie implies further that the scripture which Islam is based upon, the Holy Qur'an, was in fact not written by God through the angel Gabriel, but from the man Muhammad who instead dictated words to Gabriel, thus making Islam human rather than faith based. Here is where the sacrilege came into play because Rushdie implied that Islamic faith is deceitful. Rushdie attempts to cover his tracks through creative uses of names and historical references, i.e. using the name Mahoud for Muhammad and Jahilia ("ignorance" in Arabic) for Mecca. Needless to say Rushdie placed his own head on a platter and it appears he served it up without naive innocence but rather with a huge slathering of egoism! I think that people of any faith will be able to see the injustice and a fine line appears between independent thought and all out blasphemy.