The Satanic Verses

The Satanic Verses is the fourth novel by the British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie, first published in September 1988. It was inspired in part by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and, as with his earlier books, Rushdie used magical realism and drew on contemporary events and people to construct his characters.

The title refers to the satanic verses, a group of Quranic verses that refer to three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza and Manāt. The part of the story dealing with those verses was based on accounts by the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari, which is to say that the novel uses early Islamic historiography as material rather than inventing its religious references.

In the United Kingdom the book received positive reviews, was a finalist for the 1988 Booker Prize, losing to Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda, and won the 1988 Whitbread Award for novel of the year. Timothy Brennan called it the most ambitious novel yet published to deal with the immigrant experience in Britain. The book and the perception of blasphemy around it motivated organised protest and violence, which is why it is discussed as much for its reception as for its content.