Twenty-Seven Years on from The Satanic Verses: Can Works of Fiction be Political?

Twenty-Seven Years on from The Satanic Verses: Can Works of Fiction be Political?

On the 16th May, the man who stabbed author Salman Rushdie following a literary event in 2022 was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Almost three years after the assassination attempt on Salman Rushdie, it feels there are two predominant approaches to reading The Satanic Verses: getting lost in its immense creative energy, or keeping at a remove, with its political implications in mind.  The response to Rushdie’s novel has been nothing short of ex…