The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie (Viking, 54 7 pp., $19.95) LIKE JOYCE'S Ulysses, Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses is probably destined to be one of the leastread best-sellers of all time. Its main claim to fame is the violent exception that...

The Satanic Verses By Salman Rushdie Viking. 547 pp. $19.95. Reviewed by Alan Wade Fiction writer, free-lance critic "'To BE BORN AGAIN,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, first you have to die."' So begins Salman Rushdie's controversial new novel, The...

Pakistan and Iran have summoned their British ambassadors to protest that author Salman Rushdie, accused of insulting Islam in his novel "The Satanic Verses," was to be honored with a knighthood.Iranian Foreign Ministry official Ebrahim Rahimpour told the British ambassador to Tehran, Geoffrey Adams, that...

Iran on Sunday condemned Britain's decision to knight Salman Rushdie, the author who was forced into hiding for a decade after the leader of the Iranian revolution ordered his assassination.Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said granting Britain's highest honor to Rushdie, whose novel...

In the following essay, Dossa explains the tension between Western postmodern ideals of freedom—which, he argues, are infused with a rigid and imperialist misunderstanding of other cultures—and traditional "third-world" cultures and argues that Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses relies on both medieval and postmodern European and American stereotypes of Islam, offering no alternatives to the society he criticizes.