The Satanic Verses

50 Books for 50 years

Powell's anniversary list: 1971-2021

I read Rushdie’s infamous novel at the gym, which is almost as ridiculous as the fact that it still feels a little scary to go on the record as liking it. The story of Gibreel and Saladin, who survive a plane crash by transforming into the Archangel Gabriel and the Devil, respectively, The Satanic Verses is a picaresque fueled by religious hallucinations and mundane misfortunes. It’s a brilliant allegory for the internal and social growing pains of multicultural identity, something the brouhaha it caused is an unknowing allegory for too. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com

#1 New York Times Bestseller

"[A] torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths." Newsday

Winner of the Whitbread Prize

One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.

"A novel of metamorphoses, hauntings, memories, hallucinations, revelations, advertising jingles, and jokes. Rushdie has the power of description, and we succumb." The Times (London)

"Exhilarating, populous, loquacious, sometimes hilarious, extraordinary...a roller-coaster ride over a vast landscape of the imagination." The Guardian (London)

"Rushdie is a storyteller of prodigious powers, able to conjure up whole geographies, causalities, climates, creatures, customs, out of thin air." The New York Times Book Review

Salman Rushdie is the author of twelve novels — Grimus, Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), Shame, The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown, The Enchantress of Florence, Luka and the Fire of Life, and Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights — and one collection of short stories: East, West. He has also published four works of nonfiction — Joseph Anton, The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands, and Step Across This Line — and co-edited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature.

In response to the horrific attack on Salman Rushdie, and in honor of the 34th anniversary of the publication of The Satanic Verses in the UK, we pulled together some thoughts, reflections, and memories from Powell’s booksellers, as well as our very own Michael Powell...

Read More»