Gibreel and Saladin have been chosen (by whom?) as protagonists in the eternal wrestling match between Good and Evil. So begins The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie’s first novel for five years. Gibreel seems to have acquired a halo, while, to Saladin’s dismay, his legs grow hairier, his feet turn into hoofs, and there are bumps burgeoning at his temples. A miracle but an ambiguous one, because it soon becomes apparent that curious changes are coming over them. Clinging to each other, singing rival songs, they plunge downward, and are finally washed up, alive, on the snow-covered sands of an English beach. Through the debris of limbs, drinks trolleys, memories, blankets and oxygen masks, two figures fall towards the sea without benefit of parachutes: Gibreel Farishta, India’s legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices, self-made self and Anglophile supreme. Rushdie has the power of description, and we succumb.Just before dawn one winter’s morning a hijacked jumbo-jet blows apart high above the English Channel. “A novel of metamorphoses, hauntings, memories, hallucinations, revelations, advertising jingles, and jokes. a roller-coaster ride over a vast landscape of the imagination.” -The Guardian (London)
“Exhilarating, populous, loquacious, sometimes hilarious, extraordinary. “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 In this spectacular novel, verbal pyrotechnics barely outshine its psychological truths.” -Newsday “ torrent of endlessly inventive prose, by turns comic and enraged, embracing life in all its contradictions. “A staggering achievement, brilliantly enjoyable.” -Nadine Gordimer Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.
This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. 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. One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s best-known and most galvanizing book.
0 kommentar(er)
