I’m finally now experiencing The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie and it’s quite an uproarious and incredible ride. My previously limited glancing familiarity with the work had all to do with the fatwa issued against the author by the late Iranian President Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and nothing to do with the potential joy of language and storytelling, high creativity of words and writing and unleashed beauty that the book would contain. Such surrounding seriousness and drama and the title of the work itself made me think the book would be a heavy affair. I thought it was probably the kind of book only scholars and intellectuals would ever feel any interest in reading or obligation toward defending. This book instead is actually marvelously creative, regenerative and fun, I’m amazed and amused and filled with wonder as I go. I feel an increase of fondness and affection, adoration and delight with the characters, revelations and the developments of every successive page, this book is a rejuvenation, it has elevated and infused my interest in language and stories and in writing. I’d put The Satanic Verses high up there with other big beautiful books I’ve loved, like Infinite Jest, Gulliver’s Travels and Ulysses. It’s disappointing and upsetting and a genuine shame that politics, violence and murder all have overshadowed what should be the real and celebrated point: that Salman Rushdie is a wonderful writer and that The Satanic Verses is a book that is truly great. It seems what believers in Islam actually read the work denounced it at once as blasphemous and sacrilegious. They opposed it for making an apparent mockery of their faith (which in many certain gleeful ways, it does). Hurt feelings and anger resulted in a call for the death of Salman Rushdie and the author went into hiding. The Japanese translator of the book was meanwhile killed. His body was discovered dragged and bloodied in the hall outside of his university office, replete with fatal stab wounds to his arms and head. The Italian translator of the book was also multiply stabbed but that translator survived the attack. Jesus right. The dangerous and deadly world of translators. The constrained and menaced life of the authors of great books. Who knew. Deeply religious people have no sense of humour, that’s one thing that is regrettably, unfortunately clear and true.