Salman Rushdie is a British-Indian novelist best known for the novels Midnight's Children. He studied in India and England, reading History at King's College, Cambridge. His first novel, Grimus, was published in 1975. Much of his fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. He combines magical realism with historical fiction; his work is concerned with the many connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations. The Satanic Verses is a magic realist epic novel that upon its publication in 1988 became one of the most controversial books in recent times. On New Year's Day, terrorists blow up a jet over the English Channel. Gibreel Farishta, a popular Bollywood actor, and Saladin Chamcha, a successful voice actor living in London, survived the explosion. Upon landing on the English coast, Gibreel and Saladin find themselves forever changed: Gibreel has been given a halo like an archangel Gabriel and Saladin has started to transform into a cloven-hoofed devil… In the United Kingdom, The Satanic Verses received positive reviews, was a 1988 Booker Prize finalist and won the 1988 Whitbread Award for the novel of the year. However, major controversy ensued as Muslims accused it of blasphemy and mocking their faith. The outrage among Muslims resulted in a fatwā calling for Rushdie's death issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then Supreme Leader of Iran, on 14 February 1989. You can listen online to free English audiobook “Satanic Verses” by Salman Rushdie on our website.
