#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths.”—Newsday
Winner of the Whitbread Prize
One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.
Praise for The Satanic Verses
“Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Exhilarating, populous, loquacious, sometimes hilarious, extraordinary . . . a roller-coaster ride over a vast landscape of the imagination.”—The Guardian (London)
“A novel of metamorphoses, hauntings, memories, hallucinations, revelations, advertising jingles, and jokes. Rushdie has the power of description, and we succumb.”—The Times (London)
The Satanic VersesI. The Angel Gibreel II. Mahound III. Ellowen Deeowen IV. Ayesha V. A City Visible but Unseen VI. Return to Jahilia VII. The Angel Azraeel VIII. The Parting of the Arabian Sea IX. A Wonderful Lamp
"Salman Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air." -- The New York Times Book Review
“[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths.”—Newsday
“Exhilarating, populous, loquacious, sometimes hilarious, extraordinary . . . a roller-coaster ride over a vast landscape of the imagination.”—The Guardian
—The Times (London)
"In pure aesthetic terms, “The Satanic Verses” is a delight: funny, broadly erudite and wrenchingly gorgeous. And as a matter of politics and religion, this novel embodies the unique ideological power of art: to push beyond what’s possible, to say what would be too costly for actors in another arena to speak aloud, to expand the audience’s sense of what the world can be." -- Alyssa Rosenberg, The Washington Post
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths.”—Newsday
Winner of the Whitbread Prize
One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.
Praise for The Satanic Verses
“Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Exhilarating, populous, loquacious, sometimes hilarious, extraordinary . . . a roller-coaster ride over a vast landscape of the imagination.”—The Guardian (London)
“A novel of metamorphoses, hauntings, memories, hallucinations, revelations, advertising jingles, and jokes. Rushdie has the power of description, and we succumb.”—The Times (London)
Table of Contents
The Satanic VersesI. The Angel Gibreel II. Mahound III. Ellowen Deeowen IV. Ayesha V. A City Visible but Unseen VI. Return to Jahilia VII. The Angel Azraeel VIII. The Parting of the Arabian Sea IX. A Wonderful Lamp
Praise
"Salman Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air." -- The New York Times Book Review
“[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths.”—Newsday
“Exhilarating, populous, loquacious, sometimes hilarious, extraordinary . . . a roller-coaster ride over a vast landscape of the imagination.”—The Guardian
—The Times (London)
"In pure aesthetic terms, “The Satanic Verses” is a delight: funny, broadly erudite and wrenchingly gorgeous. And as a matter of politics and religion, this novel embodies the unique ideological power of art: to push beyond what’s possible, to say what would be too costly for actors in another arena to speak aloud, to expand the audience’s sense of what the world can be." -- Alyssa Rosenberg, The Washington Post
