‘To be born again,’ sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, ‘first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly, Tat-taa! Taka-thun! How ever to smile again, if at first you won’t cry? How to win the darling’s love, mister, without a sign? Baba, if you want to get born again…’ Just before dawn one winter’s morning, New Year’s Day or thereabouts, two real, full-grown, living men fell from a great height, twenty-nine thousand and two feet, towards the English Channel, without the benefit of parachutes or wings, out of a clear sky.
Salman Rushdie
The Satanic Verses
1988
This is the book that made Salman Rushdie a household name. Not for the book, mind you, for the fact that the Ayatollah of Iran issued a fatwa, a spiritual price on his head, for having written it. Yes, the title does refer to writings believed by some Muslims to be untenable at best and blasphemous at worst, but the book is “inspired by”, not fact. It is a beautiful novel whose political import has obscured the fact that it is fiction. It starts, after all, with two men falling out of the sky and only gets more magical from there. And just listen to the joy in the opening lines: “Ho ji! Ho ji!” To understand a book, first one needs to read it!
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