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3.7 AVERAGE
3.7 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would - much preferred Midnight's Children.
DO NOT listen to this on audiobook. It is not a book that you can half-listen to while you're driving. It also is not a beach read. It is a book that you need to read with a notebook full of indexes and charts to keep everything straight.
Early in the fourth chapter of the book I realized I had no idea what was happening or who any of the characters were and ran it back... and realized that the reason I didn't know what was happening was because the book had suddenly completely shifted focus, setting, and cast of characters.
This happens multiple times, and the shifts last for anywhere from the equivalent of fifty to a hundred pages. Everything comes together in the end, but honestly I'm going to have to listen to it probably at least twice more to even begin to glean a solid understanding of events from it. This is the kind of book you could build an entire semester's class around on its own. Worth reading, to be sure, but not one to pick up to read quickly or casually.
Early in the fourth chapter of the book I realized I had no idea what was happening or who any of the characters were and ran it back... and realized that the reason I didn't know what was happening was because the book had suddenly completely shifted focus, setting, and cast of characters.
This happens multiple times, and the shifts last for anywhere from the equivalent of fifty to a hundred pages. Everything comes together in the end, but honestly I'm going to have to listen to it probably at least twice more to even begin to glean a solid understanding of events from it. This is the kind of book you could build an entire semester's class around on its own. Worth reading, to be sure, but not one to pick up to read quickly or casually.
Spoiler
Also I got quite annoyed with all the casual infidelity in this book; both Gibreel and Saladin (sp? I listened to it on audiobook) cheat on their respective partners at some point without anyone seeming to think anything of it. My guess is this was meant to emphasize that the angelic and the evil are not so different, but surely there was a way to better support the ramifications of the infidelity within the text rather than having it happen in such a way that it's practically tangential to the actual story? Just my two cents.
Myndi gefa henni lægra ef hún væri ekki svona umdeild, Rushdie hefur amk húmor þó ég hafi ekki skilið neitt í þessari bók og þurft að spæna í gegnum hana fyrir skólann. Styð ekki ritskoðun! 3 stjörnur, Rushdie!
I very nearly didn’t finish this book. It took me almost three weeks to get through the first third (very unusual for me). I recognized that it was well written and funny but it just didn’t engage me. In the first place, I was missing a lot of the references. Rushdie draws heavily upon Indian history, mythology, theology and general culture, subjects upon which I am not well versed. It also quickly became apparent to me how lacking is my knowledge of Islam. Secondly, it is just so large and ambitious with many different stories, sub –plots, allegories and dozens of characters, all of which and whom are constantly re-told from different views and realities. The supernatural and stark realism intertwine adding layer, after layer.
I did persevere and finish. And yes, it was worth it. As I began to take a larger view my appreciation and involvement grew. It doesn’t really matter that Rushdie is talking about Islam or India. What he is really talking about is belonging, belief and being human. At its core this is a story of two men trying to discover who they are and where they belong. Early In that struggle they deal, as we all do, with the places, ideas and the people that define them – holding some close, pushing others away. When a plane they are both on is hijacked, they are at first separated from everything they hold dear and held in a hellish limbo until they are literally thrown free from their lives.
Bearing witness to these men as they attempt to, at times recreate the lives they lost and at others completely recreate themselves from the soul on up, is fascinating, often funny and surprisingly touching when you least expect it.
I do, however think I would have been drawn in far more quickly and enjoyed it all more thoroughly if the editing had been a little more, well, more. While it is true that it does all hang together in the final analysis it also bogs down in places and the descriptions tend to meander like a literary Grandpa Simpson.
I did persevere and finish. And yes, it was worth it. As I began to take a larger view my appreciation and involvement grew. It doesn’t really matter that Rushdie is talking about Islam or India. What he is really talking about is belonging, belief and being human. At its core this is a story of two men trying to discover who they are and where they belong. Early In that struggle they deal, as we all do, with the places, ideas and the people that define them – holding some close, pushing others away. When a plane they are both on is hijacked, they are at first separated from everything they hold dear and held in a hellish limbo until they are literally thrown free from their lives.
Bearing witness to these men as they attempt to, at times recreate the lives they lost and at others completely recreate themselves from the soul on up, is fascinating, often funny and surprisingly touching when you least expect it.
I do, however think I would have been drawn in far more quickly and enjoyed it all more thoroughly if the editing had been a little more, well, more. While it is true that it does all hang together in the final analysis it also bogs down in places and the descriptions tend to meander like a literary Grandpa Simpson.
I felt this book was definitely highly intelligent and had many depths and levels..unfortunately, it was almost too heady for me..I think I would need another pass at it to take everything in.
challenging
inspiring
tense
‘The Satanic Verses’ by Salman Rushdie is about the larger influence of what other people think who you are, and how your thoughts about yourself can mutate because of what other people think of you. People will treat you, and act towards you, based on what they think you are. Two different things -You vs. the image of you. Or the third thing - you having internalized their vision of you into yourself.
Identity can be a demon living inside of you. And if you try to escape the self other people created for you, you can’t, not really. Neurons seared by struggles with identity feed unwelcome self-doubt.
One’s Culture affects thinking. But Culture changes and mutates as Time passes. Since religion is culture, it mutates your image of who you are as well. People are their culture. But culture is always mutating. What was beautiful or holy or admired, or what social rules were a hundred years ago, might not be beautiful or holy or admired or what the rules are today. Also, what is beautiful or holy or admired, or what the rules are, in one culture is not beautiful or holy or admired or what the rules are in a nearby culture of another territory or country, either, something a traveler can experience in the same day. An airplane trip can change your entire image of what people used to think of you, the whole of how you are perceived by others, in an hour or two. East meets West on common ground? Not bloody likely. You are who you think you are in the West as you were thought of in the East? Not bloody likely either. Fricking mutable identity - POW. Identity is apparently a flimsy masquerade, easily knocked awry. Each of us is the last one to know who we are when, during, after, who we think we are is put to a test.
People can mutate the harmless you you desire to be into an evil monster or a saint. Celebrities know very well the mob can love you one day and hate you the next. People are thinking they know you from only the images of you but they are actually mutating your airbrushed third-hand image.
Who are you now, exactly? The image in the mirror you see? Well, mirrors reverse your image, so its a scientific fact you never really see yourself. The image you see mirrored in the eyes of other people, coming off of you in the form of photons is twisted upside down by the lens in the eyes, and lands upside down on our retinas. People actually see images upside down, which is flipped again in the brain. Then there is the question of is what I see the same as what you see? I have a headache now.
If you become insane in the effort to be authentic, whatever that is, well, yeah. How could you not?
Below I have copied the book blurb:
”One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.
~randomhousebooks.com
If you notice how the description of the book by the publisher is a bit obscure, nebulous, I think so too. But it fits the plot. This is an intellectual’s domestic fiction novel, with satirical under - and some sly overt - tones. It is a commentary about the invention of the self, but it is a self that is also curated through culture and the eyes of other people raised within a culture. It is about the perceptions of the human mind, the filtering we do with the brain, to make it all palatable to ourselves, which is in fact the dual function of the brain in interpreting reality. Reality? Wtf is that? The interplay of cells and neurons - our physical wiring - and the visions that serve us, guide us, the visions that often cannot be understood by us whether they are coming out of our dream life and what we call waking life, are they reality?
The novel is full of magical realism, and deep thoughts about culture and immigration, and our place in a culture, and the imagined self.
However, I suppose gentle reader, you actually want a plot description. From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses:
”The Satanic Verses consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The frame narrative, like many other stories by Rushdie, involves Indian expatriates in contemporary England. The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar who specialises in playing Hindu deities (the character is partly based on Indian film stars Amitabh Bachchan and N. T. Rama Rao). Chamcha is an emigrant who has broken with his Indian identity and works as a voiceover artist in England.
At the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a hijacked plane flying from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two are magically saved. In a miraculous transformation, Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gabriel and Chamcha that of a devil. Chamcha is arrested and passes through an ordeal of police abuse as a suspected illegal immigrant. Farishta's transformation can partly be read on a realistic level as the symptom of the protagonist's development of schizophrenia.[editorializing]
Both characters struggle to piece their lives back together. Farishta seeks and finds his lost love, the English mountaineer Allie Cone, but their relationship is overshadowed by his mental illness. Chamcha, having miraculously regained his human shape, wants to take revenge on Farishta for having forsaken him after their common fall from the hijacked plane. He does so by fostering Farishta's pathological jealousy and thus destroying his relationship with Allie. In another moment of crisis, Farishta realises what Chamcha has done, but forgives him and even saves his life.”.
Plus there is more and more and more…all told in wonderful writing - densely playful, full of cultural references and sideways jokes. This is a novel which needs to be read again and again.
Rushdie was raised in the Islam religion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie) which intersects in a number of its basic beliefs with Christianity. Angels and devils are the same characters in both religions. But the image of angels and devils, which might look the same to both a Christian and Muslim, are defined as representing quite different Good and Evils culturally, imho. Image/belief interpretation is in the eye of the beholder, the major theme of The Satanic Verses’ imho, in all of its permutations.
(I am going to use food as an example: food available in India, used for a religion-based meal, cannot be found in England sometimes. So meal preparers use alternative foods, sometimes they start using the foods English Christians use for their meals, making them their own. But does that make an evolving Muslim-Hindu believer Evil to other Muslims/Hindus still living in their homelands? If an Englishman sees an Indian Muslim or Hindu and sees Evil because of religion, skin color and accent, does that make the Muslim/Hindu believer actually Evil - or does it result sometimes in that he only sees himself evil in his own eyes on some subconscious level? Who has the right to define whom? Another case and type of co-opting - many Japanese are Buddhists, but many Japanese Buddhists have wholeheartedly co-opted some Christmas rituals. I read a magazine by an author who talked to Japanese who were shopping for Christmas trees, decorations and gifts. These Japanese Buddhists were mystified by the Christian stories behind our evolved Christian holidays and the forms of Christmas they too were happily embracing, further evolving, co-opting, in a completely harmless manner. Is this natural or against nature? It is natural. Is it Evil? No, imho. )
The story vehicle Rushdie uses in ‘The Satanic Verses as a foundation is the divisions created by immigration and Indian/Islam culture. What can one do to foster acceptance or reduce rejection by people? Can people grok/accept the differing personal mental visions developed/expressed by culture, if filtered by immigrants and White English people who live in or aspire to life in England in this case? Some immigrants completely reject their previous heritage, but they are in turn sometimes rejected by the people of their chosen cultural replacement, the new culture they now love and admire. Other immigrants remain in the bubble of their original culture trying to maintain their homeland inside of another, very different, homeland. The result, at least in ‘The Satanic Verses’ is a cultural chaos. There is immigrant evolution and devolution, described in Rushdie’s vision with deep intellectual amusement, amazement and confusion.
The book is a delirious and hysterical confection of wild hilarity encapsulated in a tale of amazed rage-based misery. The two main characters remind me of the character [b:Candide|19380|Candide|Voltaire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1345060082l/19380._SY75_.jpg|2833018] by Voltaire. Rushdie also kicks around Western consumerism in a major way. I was reminded of [b:Animal Farm|170448|Animal Farm|George Orwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1325861570l/170448._SY75_.jpg|2207778] ironically - about evil pigs) and [b:1984|61439040|1984|George Orwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1657781256l/61439040._SX50_.jpg|153313] by George Orwell, and [b:Lord of the Flies|7624|Lord of the Flies|William Golding|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327869409l/7624._SY75_.jpg|2766512] by William Golding, and [b:To Kill a Mockingbird|2657|To Kill a Mockingbird|Harper Lee|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553383690l/2657._SY75_.jpg|3275794] by Lee Harper, and [b:The Complete Persepolis|991197|The Complete Persepolis|Marjane Satrapi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327876995l/991197._SX50_.jpg|13344769] by Marjane Satrapi, and [b:The Bluest Eye|11337|The Bluest Eye|Toni Morrison|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388208495l/11337._SX50_.jpg|1987778] by Toni Morrison and [b:All American Boys|25657130|All American Boys|Jason Reynolds|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1444506678l/25657130._SX50_.jpg|45479026] by Jason Reynolds and [b:Saga, Volume 1|15704307|Saga, Volume 1|Brian K. Vaughan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1486028947l/15704307._SY75_.jpg|19113524] by Brian Vaughan, and [b:The Priory of the Orange Tree|40275288|The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)|Samantha Shannon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1700221964l/40275288._SY75_.jpg|50139944] by Samantha Shannon… and even [b:The Book of Enoch|616330|The Book of Enoch (Ethiopian)|Anonymous|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1410229772l/616330._SY75_.jpg|602762]. (The Book of Enoch includes the biblical tale of those angels, naming them, who were cast out of heaven because of their desire for human women.) And many more…which apparently have been printed and distributed and read in vain.
People are silly, no matter what the culture, religion, or belief system. I see the silliness of people much the same as Rushdie describes in ‘The Satanic Verses’. But it’s a very deadly silliness to some.
It is the most ironic silliness of all that the author Rushdie had a death sentence passed on him by Iran’s Supreme Leader of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 because of this book. For real. He called for Rushdie's death which has resulted in several unsuccessful assassination attempts. So far.
From the article in Wikipedia, a plot analysis with which I agree with completely:
”Muhammad Mashuq ibn Ally wrote that "The Satanic Verses is about identity, alienation, rootlessness, brutality, compromise, and conformity. These concepts confront all migrants, disillusioned with both cultures: the one they are in and the one they join. Yet knowing they cannot live a life of anonymity, they mediate between them both. The Satanic Verses is a reflection of the author’s dilemmas." The work is an "albeit surreal, record of its own author's continuing identity crisis."Ally said that the book reveals the author ultimately as "the victim of nineteenth-century British colonialism." Rushdie himself spoke confirming this interpretation of his book, saying that it was not about Islam, "but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay." He has also said "It's a novel which happened to contain a castigation of Western materialism. The tone is comic."
But. However. From Wikipedia:
”The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a group of Quranic verses about three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the "satanic verses" was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari.”
“The book and its perceived blasphemy motivated Islamic extremist bombings, killings, and riots and sparked a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. Fearing unrest, the Rajiv Gandhi government banned the importation of the book into India. In 1989, Supreme Leader of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini called for Rushdie's death, resulting in several failed assassination attempts on the author, who was granted police protection by the UK government, and attacks on connected individuals, including the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi, who was stabbed to death in 1991. Assassination attempts against Rushdie continued, including an attempt on his life in August 2022.”
”After the Satanic Verses controversy developed, some scholars familiar with the book and the whole of Rushdie's work, like M. D. Fletcher, saw the reaction as ironic. Fletcher wrote "It is perhaps a relevant irony that some of the major expressions of hostility toward Rushdie came from those about whom and (in some sense) for whom he wrote." He said the manifestations of the controversy in Britain:
“”embodied an anger arising in part from the frustrations of the migrant experience and generally reflected failures of multicultural integration, both significant Rushdie themes. Clearly, Rushdie's interests centrally include explorations of how migration heightens one's awareness that perceptions of reality are relative and fragile, and of the nature of religious faith and revelation, not to mention the political manipulation of religion. Rushdie's own assumptions about the importance of literature parallel the literal value accorded the written word in Islamic tradition to some degree. But Rushdie seems to have assumed that diverse communities and cultures share some degree of common moral ground on the basis of which dialogue can be pieced together, and it is perhaps for this reason that he underestimated the implacable nature of the hostility evoked by The Satanic Verses, even though a major theme of that novel is the dangerous nature of closed, absolutist belief systems.””
Can’t we all get along? Apparently not.
I highly recommend this book, but it is a dense literary and satirical read. If it were not for the controversy, I suspect the novel would not be on many bookshelves. It is extremely literary, a high-end modern allegory. It is a not very disguised commentary that describes Western and Eastern societal myths in an unfavorable light. I see what Rushdie saw, I agree with his vision of the chaos and hurtfulness of human cultures and clashes.
All cultures form because of the human need to formulate a paradigm to make sense of reality, a comfortable nest to live within. These cultural formulations, brought into the world in isolation in different parts of the world, showcase the variety of human adaptation. Unfortunately, they also showcase human maladaptivity, too.
This is a banned book in many Middle-Eastern countries, of which most are dictatorial theocracies, who have laws to kill anyone with diverse lifestyles and thinking. Many of these countries have a death penalty for atheists on the books. Many of these Islamic countries have the death penalty for any Muslim who changes to another religion. Many of these countries, depending on what kind of Islam they demand of their citizens, have the death penalty for Muslims of a different religious sect of Islam. Don’t feed this theocratic insanity, gentle reader, wherever you are from. Diversity of ideas and public discussion of many ideas is a good thing! I admire flexible minds and flexible multicultural societies and I try to feel tolerance for harmless religious beliefs, if not exactly respectful, sorry. I hate, yes, hate, censorship and all organized religions. All organized religions censor and murder people with different ideas today, some more than others, full stop.
Considering the many many many many books published about these very same themes - about religious and racial hatreds, gender prejudices, politically-based hatreds, history - which are mostly all about the immoral killing off of The Other for no good reasons other than they are different - why do those who ban books bother? Banned books become bestsellers, sure enough, because they got banned. For millennia. Rushdie is in a long distinguished blockchain of authors whom small-minded evil people have tried to silence. The bad news is every generation births small-minded evil book banners and burners. Humans don’t pass down instinctual memories to their offspring. Unfortunately, every generation repeats the errors of prejudice again and again. Thankfully, we have books. Rushdie’s books will be around forever, somewhere, even if hidden in closets or passed down in the manner of [b:Fahrenheit 451|13079982|Fahrenheit 451|Ray Bradbury|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1383718290l/13079982._SY75_.jpg|1272463] by Ray Bradbury.
The Truth is hard for many to face. We shit in our own nests. We murder others for the motes we see in their eyes ignoring that it looks exactly like the one in our own eyes. How many great humans were almost murdered because of religion (Albert Einstein, for one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein) and how many genius humans have we murdered or stifled (including a lot of genius women) who could have maybe made it possible for us to have a Mars habitat right now?
Identity can be a demon living inside of you. And if you try to escape the self other people created for you, you can’t, not really. Neurons seared by struggles with identity feed unwelcome self-doubt.
One’s Culture affects thinking. But Culture changes and mutates as Time passes. Since religion is culture, it mutates your image of who you are as well. People are their culture. But culture is always mutating. What was beautiful or holy or admired, or what social rules were a hundred years ago, might not be beautiful or holy or admired or what the rules are today. Also, what is beautiful or holy or admired, or what the rules are, in one culture is not beautiful or holy or admired or what the rules are in a nearby culture of another territory or country, either, something a traveler can experience in the same day. An airplane trip can change your entire image of what people used to think of you, the whole of how you are perceived by others, in an hour or two. East meets West on common ground? Not bloody likely. You are who you think you are in the West as you were thought of in the East? Not bloody likely either. Fricking mutable identity - POW. Identity is apparently a flimsy masquerade, easily knocked awry. Each of us is the last one to know who we are when, during, after, who we think we are is put to a test.
People can mutate the harmless you you desire to be into an evil monster or a saint. Celebrities know very well the mob can love you one day and hate you the next. People are thinking they know you from only the images of you but they are actually mutating your airbrushed third-hand image.
Who are you now, exactly? The image in the mirror you see? Well, mirrors reverse your image, so its a scientific fact you never really see yourself. The image you see mirrored in the eyes of other people, coming off of you in the form of photons is twisted upside down by the lens in the eyes, and lands upside down on our retinas. People actually see images upside down, which is flipped again in the brain. Then there is the question of is what I see the same as what you see? I have a headache now.
If you become insane in the effort to be authentic, whatever that is, well, yeah. How could you not?
Below I have copied the book blurb:
”One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.
~randomhousebooks.com
If you notice how the description of the book by the publisher is a bit obscure, nebulous, I think so too. But it fits the plot. This is an intellectual’s domestic fiction novel, with satirical under - and some sly overt - tones. It is a commentary about the invention of the self, but it is a self that is also curated through culture and the eyes of other people raised within a culture. It is about the perceptions of the human mind, the filtering we do with the brain, to make it all palatable to ourselves, which is in fact the dual function of the brain in interpreting reality. Reality? Wtf is that? The interplay of cells and neurons - our physical wiring - and the visions that serve us, guide us, the visions that often cannot be understood by us whether they are coming out of our dream life and what we call waking life, are they reality?
The novel is full of magical realism, and deep thoughts about culture and immigration, and our place in a culture, and the imagined self.
However, I suppose gentle reader, you actually want a plot description. From Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses:
”The Satanic Verses consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The frame narrative, like many other stories by Rushdie, involves Indian expatriates in contemporary England. The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar who specialises in playing Hindu deities (the character is partly based on Indian film stars Amitabh Bachchan and N. T. Rama Rao). Chamcha is an emigrant who has broken with his Indian identity and works as a voiceover artist in England.
At the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a hijacked plane flying from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two are magically saved. In a miraculous transformation, Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gabriel and Chamcha that of a devil. Chamcha is arrested and passes through an ordeal of police abuse as a suspected illegal immigrant. Farishta's transformation can partly be read on a realistic level as the symptom of the protagonist's development of schizophrenia.[editorializing]
Both characters struggle to piece their lives back together. Farishta seeks and finds his lost love, the English mountaineer Allie Cone, but their relationship is overshadowed by his mental illness. Chamcha, having miraculously regained his human shape, wants to take revenge on Farishta for having forsaken him after their common fall from the hijacked plane. He does so by fostering Farishta's pathological jealousy and thus destroying his relationship with Allie. In another moment of crisis, Farishta realises what Chamcha has done, but forgives him and even saves his life.”.
Plus there is more and more and more…all told in wonderful writing - densely playful, full of cultural references and sideways jokes. This is a novel which needs to be read again and again.
Rushdie was raised in the Islam religion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie) which intersects in a number of its basic beliefs with Christianity. Angels and devils are the same characters in both religions. But the image of angels and devils, which might look the same to both a Christian and Muslim, are defined as representing quite different Good and Evils culturally, imho. Image/belief interpretation is in the eye of the beholder, the major theme of The Satanic Verses’ imho, in all of its permutations.
(I am going to use food as an example: food available in India, used for a religion-based meal, cannot be found in England sometimes. So meal preparers use alternative foods, sometimes they start using the foods English Christians use for their meals, making them their own. But does that make an evolving Muslim-Hindu believer Evil to other Muslims/Hindus still living in their homelands? If an Englishman sees an Indian Muslim or Hindu and sees Evil because of religion, skin color and accent, does that make the Muslim/Hindu believer actually Evil - or does it result sometimes in that he only sees himself evil in his own eyes on some subconscious level? Who has the right to define whom? Another case and type of co-opting - many Japanese are Buddhists, but many Japanese Buddhists have wholeheartedly co-opted some Christmas rituals. I read a magazine by an author who talked to Japanese who were shopping for Christmas trees, decorations and gifts. These Japanese Buddhists were mystified by the Christian stories behind our evolved Christian holidays and the forms of Christmas they too were happily embracing, further evolving, co-opting, in a completely harmless manner. Is this natural or against nature? It is natural. Is it Evil? No, imho. )
The story vehicle Rushdie uses in ‘The Satanic Verses as a foundation is the divisions created by immigration and Indian/Islam culture. What can one do to foster acceptance or reduce rejection by people? Can people grok/accept the differing personal mental visions developed/expressed by culture, if filtered by immigrants and White English people who live in or aspire to life in England in this case? Some immigrants completely reject their previous heritage, but they are in turn sometimes rejected by the people of their chosen cultural replacement, the new culture they now love and admire. Other immigrants remain in the bubble of their original culture trying to maintain their homeland inside of another, very different, homeland. The result, at least in ‘The Satanic Verses’ is a cultural chaos. There is immigrant evolution and devolution, described in Rushdie’s vision with deep intellectual amusement, amazement and confusion.
The book is a delirious and hysterical confection of wild hilarity encapsulated in a tale of amazed rage-based misery. The two main characters remind me of the character [b:Candide|19380|Candide|Voltaire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1345060082l/19380._SY75_.jpg|2833018] by Voltaire. Rushdie also kicks around Western consumerism in a major way. I was reminded of [b:Animal Farm|170448|Animal Farm|George Orwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1325861570l/170448._SY75_.jpg|2207778] ironically - about evil pigs) and [b:1984|61439040|1984|George Orwell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1657781256l/61439040._SX50_.jpg|153313] by George Orwell, and [b:Lord of the Flies|7624|Lord of the Flies|William Golding|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327869409l/7624._SY75_.jpg|2766512] by William Golding, and [b:To Kill a Mockingbird|2657|To Kill a Mockingbird|Harper Lee|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553383690l/2657._SY75_.jpg|3275794] by Lee Harper, and [b:The Complete Persepolis|991197|The Complete Persepolis|Marjane Satrapi|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327876995l/991197._SX50_.jpg|13344769] by Marjane Satrapi, and [b:The Bluest Eye|11337|The Bluest Eye|Toni Morrison|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388208495l/11337._SX50_.jpg|1987778] by Toni Morrison and [b:All American Boys|25657130|All American Boys|Jason Reynolds|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1444506678l/25657130._SX50_.jpg|45479026] by Jason Reynolds and [b:Saga, Volume 1|15704307|Saga, Volume 1|Brian K. Vaughan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1486028947l/15704307._SY75_.jpg|19113524] by Brian Vaughan, and [b:The Priory of the Orange Tree|40275288|The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos, #1)|Samantha Shannon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1700221964l/40275288._SY75_.jpg|50139944] by Samantha Shannon… and even [b:The Book of Enoch|616330|The Book of Enoch (Ethiopian)|Anonymous|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1410229772l/616330._SY75_.jpg|602762]. (The Book of Enoch includes the biblical tale of those angels, naming them, who were cast out of heaven because of their desire for human women.) And many more…which apparently have been printed and distributed and read in vain.
People are silly, no matter what the culture, religion, or belief system. I see the silliness of people much the same as Rushdie describes in ‘The Satanic Verses’. But it’s a very deadly silliness to some.
It is the most ironic silliness of all that the author Rushdie had a death sentence passed on him by Iran’s Supreme Leader of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 because of this book. For real. He called for Rushdie's death which has resulted in several unsuccessful assassination attempts. So far.
From the article in Wikipedia, a plot analysis with which I agree with completely:
”Muhammad Mashuq ibn Ally wrote that "The Satanic Verses is about identity, alienation, rootlessness, brutality, compromise, and conformity. These concepts confront all migrants, disillusioned with both cultures: the one they are in and the one they join. Yet knowing they cannot live a life of anonymity, they mediate between them both. The Satanic Verses is a reflection of the author’s dilemmas." The work is an "albeit surreal, record of its own author's continuing identity crisis."Ally said that the book reveals the author ultimately as "the victim of nineteenth-century British colonialism." Rushdie himself spoke confirming this interpretation of his book, saying that it was not about Islam, "but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay." He has also said "It's a novel which happened to contain a castigation of Western materialism. The tone is comic."
But. However. From Wikipedia:
”The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a group of Quranic verses about three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the "satanic verses" was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari.”
“The book and its perceived blasphemy motivated Islamic extremist bombings, killings, and riots and sparked a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. Fearing unrest, the Rajiv Gandhi government banned the importation of the book into India. In 1989, Supreme Leader of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini called for Rushdie's death, resulting in several failed assassination attempts on the author, who was granted police protection by the UK government, and attacks on connected individuals, including the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi, who was stabbed to death in 1991. Assassination attempts against Rushdie continued, including an attempt on his life in August 2022.”
”After the Satanic Verses controversy developed, some scholars familiar with the book and the whole of Rushdie's work, like M. D. Fletcher, saw the reaction as ironic. Fletcher wrote "It is perhaps a relevant irony that some of the major expressions of hostility toward Rushdie came from those about whom and (in some sense) for whom he wrote." He said the manifestations of the controversy in Britain:
“”embodied an anger arising in part from the frustrations of the migrant experience and generally reflected failures of multicultural integration, both significant Rushdie themes. Clearly, Rushdie's interests centrally include explorations of how migration heightens one's awareness that perceptions of reality are relative and fragile, and of the nature of religious faith and revelation, not to mention the political manipulation of religion. Rushdie's own assumptions about the importance of literature parallel the literal value accorded the written word in Islamic tradition to some degree. But Rushdie seems to have assumed that diverse communities and cultures share some degree of common moral ground on the basis of which dialogue can be pieced together, and it is perhaps for this reason that he underestimated the implacable nature of the hostility evoked by The Satanic Verses, even though a major theme of that novel is the dangerous nature of closed, absolutist belief systems.””
Can’t we all get along? Apparently not.
I highly recommend this book, but it is a dense literary and satirical read. If it were not for the controversy, I suspect the novel would not be on many bookshelves. It is extremely literary, a high-end modern allegory. It is a not very disguised commentary that describes Western and Eastern societal myths in an unfavorable light. I see what Rushdie saw, I agree with his vision of the chaos and hurtfulness of human cultures and clashes.
All cultures form because of the human need to formulate a paradigm to make sense of reality, a comfortable nest to live within. These cultural formulations, brought into the world in isolation in different parts of the world, showcase the variety of human adaptation. Unfortunately, they also showcase human maladaptivity, too.
This is a banned book in many Middle-Eastern countries, of which most are dictatorial theocracies, who have laws to kill anyone with diverse lifestyles and thinking. Many of these countries have a death penalty for atheists on the books. Many of these Islamic countries have the death penalty for any Muslim who changes to another religion. Many of these countries, depending on what kind of Islam they demand of their citizens, have the death penalty for Muslims of a different religious sect of Islam. Don’t feed this theocratic insanity, gentle reader, wherever you are from. Diversity of ideas and public discussion of many ideas is a good thing! I admire flexible minds and flexible multicultural societies and I try to feel tolerance for harmless religious beliefs, if not exactly respectful, sorry. I hate, yes, hate, censorship and all organized religions. All organized religions censor and murder people with different ideas today, some more than others, full stop.
Considering the many many many many books published about these very same themes - about religious and racial hatreds, gender prejudices, politically-based hatreds, history - which are mostly all about the immoral killing off of The Other for no good reasons other than they are different - why do those who ban books bother? Banned books become bestsellers, sure enough, because they got banned. For millennia. Rushdie is in a long distinguished blockchain of authors whom small-minded evil people have tried to silence. The bad news is every generation births small-minded evil book banners and burners. Humans don’t pass down instinctual memories to their offspring. Unfortunately, every generation repeats the errors of prejudice again and again. Thankfully, we have books. Rushdie’s books will be around forever, somewhere, even if hidden in closets or passed down in the manner of [b:Fahrenheit 451|13079982|Fahrenheit 451|Ray Bradbury|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1383718290l/13079982._SY75_.jpg|1272463] by Ray Bradbury.
The Truth is hard for many to face. We shit in our own nests. We murder others for the motes we see in their eyes ignoring that it looks exactly like the one in our own eyes. How many great humans were almost murdered because of religion (Albert Einstein, for one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein) and how many genius humans have we murdered or stifled (including a lot of genius women) who could have maybe made it possible for us to have a Mars habitat right now?