The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

This book was chosen for my book club read and I was looking forward to finally knowing what all the hype was about. I was so disappointed! It starts off in a way I wasn't expecting, it's a lot more light hearted at the start and fairly easy to get into. It's a little off the wall (the main characters are falling through the air after their aeroplane explodes...) but it's not too bad. The story builds up slowly but doesn't seem to really be going anyway. This is when I realised I was only about a third of the way through and it felt like I had been reading it for ages. The last two thirds really dragged and for a relatively long book (500 pages or so) you ...  Read the complete review

“The Satanic Verses” is one of those books that is bound to get a reaction with the mere mention of its name. Along with other books like “The Kama Sutra” and “Mein Kampf”, it has been heard of by just about everybody, and just about everybody has an opinion of some sort on it – but the number of people to have actually read the book is probably much lower than its reputation suggests. Before reading the book myself, I had clear memories of scenes of book-burning on the evening news and the word “fatwa” appearing every time Salman Rushdie’s name was mentioned. It’s hardly surprising, then, that I ...  Read the complete review