“The Satanic Verses”
Salman Rushdie
ISBN: 0312270828
$10.88 on Amazon.com
What It’s About:
“Just before dawn one winter’s morning, New Year’s Day or thereabouts, two real, full-grown, living men fell from a great height, twenty-nine thousand and two feet, towards the English Channel, without the benefit of parachutes or wings, out of a clear sky.”
After their plane explodes, two Indian men, Saladin and Gibreel land on an English beach. Although they are miraculously unharmed, both men are also inexplicably changed. Saladin grows horns, a tail and hooves, and his breath begins to reek of sulfur. Gibreel, on the other hand, is accompanied by a shining light from just above his head, not to mention the ability to fly.
What follows is a story about love and sex, good and evil, heaven and hell. So much goes on in this book that it’s hard to put it all in words. From the hospital of mutants, to Gibreel appearing as an angel to the people in his dreams, this book would be better adapted as an entire season’s worth of episodes instead of a single movie.
Why You Should Read It:
This book is expansive, so it will undoubtedly hit home with you in some way. Rushdie writes in a fluidly beautiful yet complex and intelligent way.
If you read it for no other reason, read it for this: No other book you’ve read will have so fiercely angered a religious leader to put a million dollar bounty on the author’s head. That bounty was later doubled and then tripled, and Rushdie was forced to hide from assassins for years.
If you do decide to read this book, then I must apologize. First, because it is over 500 pages long. Second, because after reading it through once, you will have to read through it again just to understand and enjoy the book fully.
– Torin Sweeney
Be the first to comment