Ramachandra Guha: How BJP is distorting Indian history to serve its majoritarian agenda.I'd never read a book like this - one that kept its secrets. These very sad characters with their very funny names spoke of places I couldn't picture, failures I could barely imagine. It was about England and India, washed-up movie stars and wrecked marriages. I figured out it wasn't really about Satan. And yet every Saturday, in a silent room filled with thousands of other books, I opened The Satanic Verses to the page I had last read. But no, she's dead.Ī book had never confounded me like this. A woman appears! Is she a temptress? But she's already dead.

But even at these times, when I could see Gibreel and Saladin so clearly, the actual actions weren't always comprehensible. The book turned into pure text at these times, a tome of arcane spells and chants - then suddenly the story would burst through again. Scott Hutchins is a former Truman Capote fellow in the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University. But first I had to figure out the central mystery: which one was Satan? So when I read about Gibreel and Saladin falling from an impossible height I felt bad for them. In the eyes of many of my evangelical neighbors, my family - Roman Catholics - might not have been in active league with the Devil, but were certainly headed to his abode. A typical Saturday would feature 10 or 12 of these transactions, all duly noted in our ledger: 'Sold Blackmail 50¢, bought Moment of Madness 25¢.' Otherwise, I tended the silence. Our only business was selling Harlequin romances for 50 cents and buying them back for 25. The bookstore appealed to my sense of the greater good - as well as my intellectual vanity.Īnd it wasn't hard work. I was informed I'd be working Saturdays, mostly by myself. So when my stepmother opened our town's first bookstore I was amazed by one book in particular: an infernal red and black volume called The Satanic Verses.Īs was common with my stepmother's many schemes, business and otherwise, I was quickly dragged in for cheap labor. His worshippers - it was honestly believed and confidently proclaimed - lived among us. He possessed otherwise good people's bodies and brought them to sin. He whispered backwards on our rock albums. In 1980s Arkansas, one concern trumped all others: Satan. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Satanic Verses Author Salman Rushdie

Salman rushdie book the satanic verses