Can anyone give me a general idea of what the Satanic Verses are about? (Is the book worth buying?)?

Answer 1

The novel consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism, interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The frame narrative, like many other stories by Rushdie, involves Indian expatriates in contemporary England. The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar who specializes in playing Hindu deities. Chamcha is an emigrant who has broken with his past Indian identity and works as a voice over specialist in England.

At the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a hijacked plane during a flight from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two are magically saved and float down to the English coast unharmed. In a miraculous transformation, the two are reborn, Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gibreel; and Chamcha, that of a satyr which evolves thunderously into a devil. Farishta's transformation can be read on a realistic level as the delusional symptom of the protagonist's developing schizophrenia.

Both characters struggle to piece their broken lives back together. Farishta seeks and finds his lost love, the English mountaineer Allie Cone, but their relationship is overshadowed by his mental illness. Salman Rushdie in this part of the book seems to pass a pessimistic view of Chamcha, Chamcha changes form he changes from the foul smelling devil to his human form with each increasing wave of hatred directed at Gibreel. Hate amongst other emotions, he seems to say, is central to being human. Chamcha, having miraculously regained his human shape, now bears a revengeful hatred towards Farishta for having forsaken him after their common fall from the hijacked plane. Chamcha takes revenge on him by fostering Farishta's pathological jealousy and thus destroying his relationship with Allie. In another moment of crisis, Farishta realizes what Chamcha has done, but forgives him and even saves his life.

Both later return to India. Farishta, still suffering from his illness, kills Allie in another outbreak of jealousy and then commits suicide. Chamcha, who has found not only forgiveness from Farishta but also reconciliation with his estranged father and his own Indian identity, decides to remain in India.

Embedded in this story is a series of half-magic dream vision narratives, ascribed to the disturbed mind of Gibreel Farishta. They are linked together by many thematic details as well as by the common motif of divine revelation, religious faith, and fanaticism, and doubt.

One of these sequences contains most of the elements that have been criticized as offensive to Muslims. It is a transformed re-narration of the life of the prophet Muhammad (called the "Messenger" [and "Mahound"] in the novel) in Mecca ("Jahilia" in the novel). At its centre is the episode of the "Satanic Verses", in which the "Messenger" first pronounces a revelation in favour of the polytheistic deities of pre-Islamic Mecca in order to placate and win over the population, but later renounces this revelation as an error induced by Satan. The narrative also presents two fictional opponents of the "Messenger": a demonic heathen priestess, Hind, and an irreverent skeptic and satirical poet, Baal. When the "Messenger" returns to the city in triumph, Baal organises an underground brothel where the prostitutes take on the identities of the "Messenger"'s wives. Also, one of the "Messenger"'s companions claims that he, doubting the "Messenger"'s authenticity, has subtly altered portions of the Qur'an as the "Messenger" narrated it to him.

The second sequence tells the story of Ayesha, an Indian peasant girl who claims to be receiving revelations from the Archangel Gibreel. She entices all her village community to embark on a foot pilgrimage to Mecca. Some of the pilgrims lose faith in Ayesha along the way in disbelief that the Arabian Sea would indeed part before them. All followers disappear underwater, possibly drowned, in the attempt to walk across the Arabian Sea at Ayesha's bidding. Interestingly, all the disbelieving pilgrims, left behind on the shore, testified in favor of parting of the sea. Only one man testified against it among the disbelievers. He was the one who watched his wife, who has cancer diagnosed by Ayesha through her visions, go in the water. It is unclear whether he lied or not about what happened.

A third dream sequence presents the figure of a fanatic expatriate religious leader, the "Imam", set again in a late-20th-century setting. This figure is a transparent allusion to the life of Ayatollah Khomeini in his Parisian exile, but it is also linked through various recurrent narrative motifs to the figure of the "Messenger".

Answer 2

Read the reports variety Muslims, and None Muslims; it sound find it irresistible could be a waste of time to learn in all phases, devout, literature, fake data, and record used to be to many for me to even take a look at it. I in most cases believe sorry, and bitty for the deficient ancient looser! How he could promote his soul for a couple of gold cash! BTW: His spouse left him dwelling him particularly depressing. Subhan Allah He who servers the Shytan (Satan) Will discover not anything however Misery and within the End the one factor that's left is Allahu Akbar!

Answer 3

I liked the cameo appearance by Harry Potter but the book gets a bit bogged down with cooking tips and footnotes about George Bush

Answer 4

Generally? They contracdict everything the Holy Bible says. And no.

Cheers
Guy
http://inhisgracecards.com

Answer 5

NO !! you should spend your time getting to your true God
& not the god want to be !! Don't worry God will reveal Him
to you so that you can stay away from Satan and have life
in Heaven .

Answer 6

That was that "Salmon Rushdie" guy I think, correct?

Answer 7

It's the most blasphemous material ever published and no the book is not worth buying!!

Here is some general info on it:

The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie's fourth novel, first published in 1988 and inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. The title refers to the Satanic Verses, an attempted interpolation in the Qur'an described by Ibn Ishaq in his biography of Muhammad (the oldest surviving text). The authenticity of these Satanic verses has been disputed by the earliest Muslim historians.[1]

The novel caused much controversy upon publication in 1988, as many Muslims considered that it contained blasphemous references. As usual, Singapore was the first country and India the second country to ban the book. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, a Shi'a Muslim scholar, issued a fatwa that called for the death of Rushdie and claimed that it was the duty of every Muslim to obey, despite never having read the book.

On February 14, 1989, the Ayatollah broadcast the following message on Iranian radio: "I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses book, which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Qur'an, and all those involved in its publication who are aware of its content are sentenced to death."[2]As a result, Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese language translator of the book was stabbed to death on July 11, 1991; Ettore Capriolo, the Italian language translator, was seriously injured in a stabbing the same month; and William Nygaard, the publisher in Norway, survived an attempted assassination in Oslo in October of 1993. On February 14, 2006, the Iranian state news agency reported that the fatwa will remain in place permanently.[3]

In the United Kingdom, however, the book garnered great critical acclaim. It was a 1988 Booker Prize Finalist, eventually losing to Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda.

The novel consists of a frame narrative, using elements of magical realism, interlaced with a series of sub-plots that are narrated as dream visions experienced by one of the protagonists. The frame narrative, like many other stories by Rushdie, involves Indian expatriates in contemporary England. The two protagonists, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, are both actors of Indian Muslim background. Farishta is a Bollywood superstar who specializes in playing Hindu deities. Chamcha is an emigrant who has broken with his past Indian identity and works as a voice over specialist in England.

At the beginning of the novel, both are trapped in a hijacked plane during a flight from India to Britain. The plane explodes over the English Channel, but the two are magically saved and float down to the English coast unharmed. In a miraculous transformation, the two are reborn, Farishta takes on the personality of the archangel Gibreel; and Chamcha, that of a satyr which evolves thunderously into a devil. Farishta's transformation can be read on a realistic level as the delusional symptom of the protagonist's developing schizophrenia.

Both characters struggle to piece their broken lives back together. Farishta seeks and finds his lost love, the English mountaineer Allie Cone, but their relationship is overshadowed by his mental illness. Salman Rushdie in this part of the book seems to pass a pessimistic view of Chamcha, Chamcha changes form he changes from the foul smelling devil to his human form with each increasing wave of hatred directed at Gibreel. Hate amongst other emotions, he seems to say, is central to being human. Chamcha, having miraculously regained his human shape, now bears a revengeful hatred towards Farishta for having forsaken him after their common fall from the hijacked plane. Chamcha takes revenge on him by fostering Farishta's pathological jealousy and thus destroying his relationship with Allie. In another moment of crisis, Farishta realizes what Chamcha has done, but forgives him and even saves his life.

Both later return to India. Farishta, still suffering from his illness, kills Allie in another outbreak of jealousy and then commits suicide. Chamcha, who has found not only forgiveness from Farishta but also reconciliation with his estranged father and his own Indian identity, decides to remain in India.

Embedded in this story is a series of half-magic dream vision narratives, ascribed to the disturbed mind of Gibreel Farishta. They are linked together by many thematic details as well as by the common motif of divine revelation, religious faith, and fanaticism, and doubt.

One of these sequences contains most of the elements that have been criticized as offensive to Muslims. It is a transformed re-narration of the life of the prophet Muhammad (called the "Messenger" [and "Mahound"] in the novel) in Mecca ("Jahilia" in the novel). At its centre is the episode of the "Satanic Verses", in which the "Messenger" first pronounces a revelation in favour of the polytheistic deities of pre-Islamic Mecca in order to placate and win over the population, but later renounces this revelation as an error induced by Satan. The narrative also presents two fictional opponents of the "Messenger": a demonic heathen priestess, Hind, and an irreverent skeptic and satirical poet, Baal. When the "Messenger" returns to the city in triumph, Baal organises an underground brothel where the prostitutes take on the identities of the "Messenger"'s wives. Also, one of the "Messenger"'s companions claims that he, doubting the "Messenger"'s authenticity, has subtly altered portions of the Qur'an as the "Messenger" narrated it to him.

The second sequence tells the story of Ayesha, an Indian peasant girl who claims to be receiving revelations from the Archangel Gibreel. She entices all her village community to embark on a foot pilgrimage to Mecca. Some of the pilgrims lose faith in Ayesha along the way in disbelief that the Arabian Sea would indeed part before them. All followers disappear underwater, possibly drowned, in the attempt to walk across the Arabian Sea at Ayesha's bidding. Interestingly, all the disbelieving pilgrims, left behind on the shore, testified in favor of parting of the sea. Only one man testified against it among the disbelievers. He was the one who watched his wife, who has cancer diagnosed by Ayesha through her visions, go in the water. It is unclear whether he lied or not about what happened.

A third dream sequence presents the figure of a fanatic expatriate religious leader, the "Imam", set again in a late-20th-century setting. This figure is a transparent allusion to the life of Ayatollah Khomeini in his Parisian exile, but it is also linked through various recurrent narrative motifs to the figure of the "Messenger".

Answer 8

no, it's not worth the money.