Signed, Brand New, First Edition, First Printing, Hardcover/Dust Jacket, List: $19.95, 550 pages
The Satanic Verses
Winner of the Whitbread Prize
A New York Times Notable Book
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
by
Sir Salman Rushdie
Sir Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magical realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent.
Sir Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize. After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Sir Rushdie became the subject of controversy, provoking protests and debates about the roles of freedom of expression and political violence. Death threats were made against him, including a fatwa calling for his assassination issued by Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran, in 1989. The British government put Sir Rushdie under police protection and he was forced into hiding.
In 1983, Sir Rushdie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France in 1999. Sir Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for his services to literature. In 2008, The Times ranked him thirteenth on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Since 2000, Sir Rushdie has lived in the United States. He was named Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University in 2015. Earlier, he taught at Emory University. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2012, he published Joseph Anton: A Memoir, an account of his life in the wake of the events following The Satanic Verses.
On August 12, 2022, Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old New Jersey man, stabbed Sir Rushdie at least ten times, severely injuring him, after rushing onto the stage where the novelist was scheduled to deliver a lecture at an event in Chautauqua, New York.
The Satanic Verses was published by on September 6, 1989.
First Edition, First Printing, hand SIGNED, in my presence, to full title page.
No inscription; full signature only.
From an event featuring Salman Rushdie and László Krasznahorkai in New York City on December 14, 2015.
BONUSES: The compete eight-page program (see photos 16, 17, 18, 19, & 20) is included.
In addition, the dust jacket is protected by a clear, removable, mylar cover.
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Book Description
#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 for Novel of the Year
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.
The Satanic Verses and its perceived blasphemy motivated Islamic extremist bombings, killings, and riots and sparked a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. Fearing unrest, the Rajiv Gandhi government banned the importation of the book into India. In 1989, Supreme Leader of Iran Ruhollah Khomeini declared a fatwa against Rushdie, resulting in several failed assassination attempts on the author, who was granted police protection by the U.K. government, and attacks on connected individuals, including the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi who was stabbed to death in 1991.
Timothy Brennan called The Satanic Verses "the most ambitious novel yet published to deal with the immigrant experience in Britain". The influential critic Harold Bloom named The Satanic Verses "Rushdie's largest aesthetic achievement".
The Satanic Verses has been accused of blasphemy for its reference to the Quranic Satanic Verses. Pakistan banned the book in November 1988. On 12 February 1989, 10,000 protesters gathered against Rushdie and The Satanic Verses in Islamabad, Pakistan. Six protesters were killed in an attack on the American Cultural Center, and an American Express office was ransacked. As the violence spread, the importing of the book was banned in India and it was burned in demonstrations in the United Kingdom.
from Publishers Weekly
Banned in India before publication, this immense novel by Booker Prize-winner Rushdie (Midnight's Children) pits Good against Evil in a whimsical and fantastic tale. Two actors from India, "prancing" Gibreel Farishta and "buttony, pursed" Saladin Chamcha, are flying across the English Channel when the first of many implausible events occurs: the jet explodes. As the two men plummet to the earth, "like titbits of tobacco from a broken old cigar," they argue, sing and are transformed. When they are found on an English beach, the only survivors of the blast, Gibreel has sprouted a halo while Saladin has developed hooves, hairy legs and the beginnings of what seem like horns. What follows is a series of allegorical tales that challenges assumptions about both human and divine nature. Rushdie's fanciful language is as concentrated and overwhelming as a paisley pattern. Angels are demonic and demons are angelic as we are propelled through one illuminating episode after another. The narrative is somewhat burdened by self-consciousness that borders on preciosity, but for Rushdie fans The Satanic Verses is a splendid feast. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
When a terrorist's bomb destroys a jumbo jet high above the English Channel, two passengers fall safely to earth: Gibreel, an Indian movie actor, and Saladin, star of the controversial British television program, The Alien Show. The near-death experience changes them into living symbols of good and evilSaladin grows horns, Gibreel a halo. From this fantastic premise Rushdie spins a huge collection of loosely related subplots that combine mythology, folklore, and TV trivia in a tour de force of magic realism that investigates the postmodern immigrant experience. (Why does an Indian expatriate feel homesick watching reruns of Dallas?) Like Rushdie's award-winning novel Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses invites comparison with the miracle-laden narratives of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Highly recommended. --Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law School Library, Los Angeles Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"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 surreal hallucinatory feast." --Kirkus Reviews
“Exhilarating, populous, loquacious, sometimes hilarious, extraordinary . . . a roller-coaster ride over a vast landscape of the imagination.”—The Guardian
"In pure aesthetic terms, The Satanic Verses is a delight: funny, broadly erudite and wrenchingly gorgeous. And as a matter of politics and religion, The Satanic Verses 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