Books, Arts & Manners: More Parts Than Whole

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie (Viking, 547 pp., $19.95)

Like Joyce’s Ulysses, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is probably destined to be one of the leastread best-sellers of all time. Its main claim to fame is the violent exception that Muslims of the yahoo variety have taken to seventy of its 547 pages. In a thinly disguised parody of the life of the Prophet Mohammed, Mr. Rushdie implies what many critics have long suspected: that the Prophet’s message was a little too worldly, and too subject to opportunistic policy adjustments, to have been divinely inspired. The mere suggestion has enraged some of the faithful, and led to book-burnings in England, bloody attacks on U.S. information centers overseas, and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s generous offer of $1 million to whatever godly gunsel manages to rub out Mr. Rushdie.

AB

About the Author

Aram Bakshian Jr.

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The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie (Viking, 547 pp., $19.95)

Like Joyce’s Ulysses, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses is probably destined to be one of the leastread best-sellers of all time. Its main claim to fame is the violent exception that Muslims of the yahoo variety have taken to seventy of its 547 pages. In a thinly disguised parody of the life of the Prophet Mohammed, Mr. Rushdie implies what many critics have long suspected: that the Prophet’s message was a little too worldly, and too subject to opportunistic policy adjustments, to have been divinely inspired. The mere suggestion has enraged some of the faithful, and led to book-burnings in England, bloody attacks on U.S. information centers overseas, and the Ayatollah Khomeini’s generous offer of $1 million to whatever godly gunsel manages to rub out Mr. Rushdie.