The Satanic Verses

Ayatollah Khomeini went through the trouble of issuing a fatwa against Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses. The UK broke diplomatic ties with Iran over it, Rushdie himself had to spend the better part of a decade in hiding under police protection, people have died...friends, this is an intense book. 

It is quite difficult to summarize The Satanic Verses with both brevity and clarity. The main hinge of the plot is that two actors, Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, survive a plane crash over the English Channel and begin two startling transformations: Gibreel into the Archangel Gabriel and Saladin into the Devil. For serious.

Why this is a Good Book:
- Rushdie is fabulous writer who surprises at every turn. He can write something profound on one page: “The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it” and goofy on another: “She's no flibberti-gibberti mamzell, but a whir-stir-get-lost-sir bundla dynamite!” His dialogue is not exactly realistic, but there's something so genuinely human about it that it just feels natural.

- The novel isn't afraid to be literal about outrageous or bizarre things. Gibreel and Saladin literally turn into Gabriel and the Devil. There is a village literally encased in butterflies. The whole novel is a tour de force of magical realism and now I can cross "tour de force" off my vocabulary bucket list.

- I won't lie to you. Many times while I was reading it and even after I had finished I felt like there was some deep undercurrent that I wasn't getting and/or that I was just not intelligent enough to read it. But this is a Good Thing! The Satanic Verses is absolutely a hard book to read, but so compelling that you know you will want to reread it and that you will get something totally new out of it every single time. You also get the immense satisfaction comes along with finishing a Hard Book that was one hundred percent Worth the Effort.

Why it's a Book that will make you Look Good:
- The controversy is quite famous, so reading this excellent novel not only tells the people sitting near you on the train that you have sophisticated literary tastes, but that you are also concerned with global issues, are well-informed on the day's news, and probably speak several languages with a bon accent.

- The cover is mad funky in a cool, I'm-probably-into-non-Western-art kind of way.

- Having the word "verses" in the title informs everyone who has never heard of this book that this is no Nora Roberts lightweight but a work that has philosophical insight and three-syllable words. Btdubs: this is true.

Wear it with:
A really great orange/gold scarf. Brings out the title beeyoutifully.

Got a Book That Makes You Look Good? Leave it in the comments!