Books

First edition, first impression, signed by the author on the title page. The furious international controversy this novel sparked has been described as "one of the most significant events in postwar literary history" (Kureishi). Rushdie, who had long been under police protection since its publication, suffered an attack over the novel in 2022. He reflects on this in Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (2024). The New York Times spoke highly of its literary merit soon after publication: "In its entirety, it resembles only itself, but there are, in its parts, strands and shades of resemblance: to Sterne, for one, in the joys of digression; to Swift in scathingness of political satire; to the fairy and folktales of the Brothers Grimm, to Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Arabian Nights, Thomas Mann's Transposed Heads, [and more]". Octavo. Original blue boards, spine lettered in gilt. With supplied dust jacket. Tiny puncture to front cover, splash mark to rear cover and bottom edge, foxing to edges, contents clean, inner hinge starting at title page; unclipped jacket, vertical crease to sunned spine, light rubbing to edges: a very good copy in like jacket. Hanif Kureishi, "Looking back at Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses", The Guardian, 14 Sept. 2012; A. G. Mojtabai, "Magical Mystery Pilgrimage", The New York Times, 29 Jan. 1989.

The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, first published in 1988 and inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. It was met with significant controversy due to its portrayal of Islamic themes which led Rushdie to face death threats and a fatwa calling for his assassination.