The Satanic Verses Book

Daring, controversial and brilliant, few books have had the global cultural impact of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. By turns satirical and playful, fantastical and bitingly relevant, Rushdie’s fictional account of the history of Islam incited riots by Islamist groups and led to the orthodox Iranian government issued a fatwa against Rushdie, which has never been officially lifted. 20 years on from its original release, the book remains freshly relevant: as a challenge to censorship, a warning about the consequences of suppressing creative expression and a masterwork of fiction. As the Guardian writes, ‘above all, perhaps, it dramatises the conviction that there is nothing more sacred than the freedom to question what is sacred. Twenty years on, it's a principle that urgently needs to be remembered.’

A Whitbread Prize winner, this book is a study of good and evil. It begins with two Indians, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their jetliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses...