Read Banned Books: The Satanic Verses

A magical realist novel featuring two Indian actors miraculously surviving a terrorist bombing of a flight to London, and dream sequences involving various religious figures (including one based on the prophet Muhammad). It won the Whitbread award for novel of the year and was a finalist for the Booker Prize.

1989 (Iran): The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, supreme leader of Iran (and the basis for a satirical character in one of the book's dream sequences) pronounced a fatwa calling on 'all zealous Muslims' to kill the author and 'all those involved in [the book's] publication'. Rushdie went into hiding for several years following this pronouncement. Several Muslim-majority countries prohibited the book's publication or importation. A series of violent attacks against those involved with the book include the 1991 murder of a Japanese translator, riots in Turkey that killed more than 30 people in 1993, the shooting of the book's Norwegian publisher the same year, and a stabbing attack in the US in 2022 that seriously injured the author. (Karolides, Nicholas J. et al. 120 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature. Second edition. New York: Checkmark Books, c2011, pp. 295-304.)

Title:	The Satanic Verses
Author:	Salman Rushdie
First published:	1988

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