Hitoshi Igarashi, who was the first Japanese scholar to translate Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses, was found dead under mysterious circumstances in 1991. Since then several translators of the controversial book have faced physical attacks.
The 1988 book, which was published by Viking Penguin on 26 September 1988 in the UK, and on 22 February 1989 in the US, became instantly controversial in Islamic communities because of what some Muslims considered blasphemous references.
