Rushdie’s first three novels – Grimus (1975), Midnight’s Children (1981) and Shame (1983) – were all met with praise but it was his fourth – The Satanic Verses – that brought criticism.
Saturday 13 August 2022 13:46, UK
Author Salman Rushdie poses for a photograph after an interview with Reuters in central London, September 28, 2012. Rushdie, best known for his Booker Prize-winning 1981 novel “Midnight’s Children”, has written a 633-page account of his time under police protection in Britain, telling in detail what it was like to live in the eye of a storm. REUTERS/Paul Hackett (BRITAIN – Tags: ENTERTAINMENT PROFILE)
Why you can trust Sky News
Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British author whose writing about religion and politics has made him controversial in some parts of the world.
His first three novels – Grimus (1975), Midnight’s Children (1981) and Shame (1983) – were all met with praise but it was his fourth – The Satanic Verses – that brought criticism.Some of the scenes in the 1988 book depict a character modelled on the Prophet Muhammad and this was met with anger from some members of the Muslim community in the UK.
They considered it blasphemous.
Protests spread as far as Pakistan in January 1989 and the following month, the spiritual leader of revolutionary Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, condemned the book and issued a fatwa against him.
A bounty was offered for his execution.
The book was burned around the world and translators of the work were attacked – Hitoshi Igarashi, who translated it into Japanese, was murdered in 1991.