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THE SATANIC VERSES
(SALMAN RUSHDIE)
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“Breaking Totems and Taboos:
Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses”
by Rossitsa Artemis,
University of Nicosia, Cyprus
Few contemporary writers have sparked as much controversy as Nobel
prize-winner Salman Rushdie, both for his fiction and non-fiction
works, and even more so for his outspoken political views. Undoubtedly,
Rushdie’s work over the years has had a “rippling” effect on
culture and politics worldwide. Rushdie continues to deal with more
ominous censors than ungracious reviewers and literary critics: shortly
after the publication of his novel The Satanic Verses (1988), Iran’s
Ayatollah Khomeini issued a legal judgment (or “fatwa”) against the
author, effectively sentencing him to death for his allegedly injurious
and heretical view of Islam. Having lived under the threat of execution
for many years, Rushdie has been made painfully aware not
simply of the reception his works receive, but also of the vulnerability
of the modern man in a world still governed by religious and political
fundamentalism and prejudice.
Acknowledged by many as an extremely gifted writer, rejected by
others as an exploiter of situations and contexts, Rushdie is extremely
prolific and never leaves readers indifferent. His provocative fiction
includes Midnight’s Children (1981), Shame (1983), Haroun and the
Sea of Stories (1990), East, West (1994), The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995),
The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999), Fury (2001), Shalimar the Clown
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