Those around at the time of the publication of The Satanic Verses may recall just how little sympathy this remarkable writer received from the great and the good (“Salman Rushdie has instructed us in a profound lesson: great literature will always be a matter of life and death”, News). Pope John Paul II, the archbishop of Canterbury, John le Carré, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Shirley Williams and many others thought the Mumbai-born author had brought the threat of an early demise on himself. He had decided to offend one of the great monotheistic religions and could expect those deeply offended by his book to take his life in the name of God.
Commenting on the fatwa in his book God is Not Great some years later, Christopher Hitchens wrote: “One might have thought that such arrogant state-sponsored homicide, directed at a lonely and peaceful individual who pursued a life devoted to language, would have called forth a general condemnation. But such was not the case.”
Bill Jackson
Nottingham
