This week’s Banned Book Friday is a little different – in a good way I think.
See, I was nearing Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses on our list – and knowing well that his life had been in danger for most of mine for having written it – I also placed a hold on his memoir, Knife.
Knife is about the (very nearly successful) attempt on his life in 2022, by a 24 year old man carrying out a fatwa – religious edict – to kill him by the Ayatollah Khomeini from 1989 – for The Satanic Verses.
Before I go on, I want to note that:
- The attacker was not even alive in 1989.
- The Ayatollah Khomeini himself died in 1989.
(Also, admittedly, neither the Ayatollah nor this young man ever read The Satanic Verses – they simply decided it was worth murdering Salman Rushdie over the content they imagined to be there.)
I found Knife to be deeply moving, a profound defense of free speech as well as the tale of Rushdie’s life from India to Britain and America. He shares the ways in which this fatwa changed the course of his life, as well as the story of his wonderful family – and the deep trauma they also endured as a result of this attack.
I highly recommend this memoir and would note that it was nominated for a National Book Award this year, 2024.
That brings us to our banned book, The Satanic Verses.
As Rushdie writes about The Satanic Verses, he explains that it was written as the last book of a trilogy, with his novels Midnight’s Children and Shame coming before it. He also says that he does not even consider it his best work.
Considering these things, I’ve decided to take Knife in its place for our reading as I suggest it to all of you – and also to share with y’all this list of three books Salman Rushdie recommends that I discovered at the end of an interview in The New York Times:
I would recommend “Don Quixote” — for many people, the first great masterpiece in the novel form. There’s now a wonderful new translation of it by Edith Grossman, which makes it very accessible to English readers. Previous translations were, frankly, a little dull. But this one is fantastically vivid and alive.
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” is one of the most joyful books ever written. From the first sentence, you are plunged into this world of magic.
And of the three great masters of the 20th century — Joyce, Proust and Kafka — we live in Kafka’s world. So I would probably say “The Trial” or “The Castle.” – Salman Rushdie, on the Ezra Klein Show, 4.26.24
If you are interested in reading this entire interview – and it is really great – here is link:
Salman Rushdie Interview on Ezra Klein – NYT.
It’s been a great Banned Books week – and I’m looking forward to this week’s reading as well.
I have a few non-book posts planned as well that I am stoked about.
Wishing you all a great start to your week and happy (free) reading.
Be well, everybody. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Grace and Blessings.
9.29.24
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
Animal Farm – George Orwell
1984 – George Orwell
Slaughterhouse Five – Kurt Vonnegut
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
A Separate Peace – John Knowles
Lolita – Vladmir Nabokov
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
As I Lay Dying – William Faulkner
LOTR – The Fellowship of The Ring – J.R.R. Tolkien
LOTR – The Two Towers – J.R.R. Tolkien
LOTR – The Return of the King – J.R.R. Tolkien
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
Beloved – Toni Morrison
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
The Call of the Wild – Jack London
Gone with the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
The Satanic Verses (substitute Knife) – Salman Rushdie
the autoimmune hippie. 