home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- PEOPLE, Page 80A Book's Not For Burning
-
-
- By EMILY MITCHELL/Reported by Jeannie Park
-
-
- When God and the devil get together, there is bound to be
- trouble, and that is just what the prizewinning novel The
- Satanic Verses, by Indian-born writer Salman Rushdie, 41, has
- produced. The book, which begins with an encounter between the
- two adversaries on an English beach, has inflamed tempers since
- its London publication in September. It was banned in India,
- Pakistan and Saudi Arabia because of its "blasphemous"
- passages, torched by Muslims in Britain, cited in bomb threats
- in New York City (where it will be published by Viking Feb. 22)
- and was nearly withdrawn from Britain's largest bookstore chain,
- for what it claimed were "purely commercial" reasons. Last week
- The Satanic Verses was selling briskly in bookshops, and
- Rushdie, now a British citizen, said the hellish affair had been
- one of "colossal confusion."
-
-
-