Fury - Salman Rushdie

  

Another one of those books that I don't remember well (just a few weeks after having read it) and that have left me more with a vague feeling than with any specific recollections. This can't be a good sign, either for the book or for my growing forgetfulness...

Out of the few images that I can recall are the terrifying picture of a father looking at his wife and child sleeping with a knife in his hand, the creation of a doll called Little Brain (that I kept on mis-reading as Little Britain, probably another not-so-good sign), and a series of more and more problematic intercontinental phone calls. 

I actually don't even remember whether the main character ends up returning home or not, which again can't be a good thing. And I've by now decided that it's a problem with the book, and not with my memory.

The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie

  

If I was to just write about this as, well, a book, I'd mention the wonderful opening scene and how it made me appreciate magical realism for the first time since I was a teenager. And then I'd talk about how that magical realism grows stale with the passing chapters. 

I'd also talk about how the novel is a sign of an author whose life and allegiance is deeply divided between countries and cultures. 

I'd also say that, ultimately, I don't consider the book a masterwork. 

Yet, one cannot talk about The Satanic Verses without talking about how the novel changed our world and, most of all, Rushdie's own world. This was true before 2022, and it has only become more true now. We are not talking about a tasteless Italian politician showing off his t-shirt with a cartoon of Muhammad. We are talking about an author who wrote (and wrote well) dream sequences in a novel, but that also happened to criticize Khomeini in the process. And we're talking about an author whose life was then turned upside-down and threatened time and again by people who most likely didn't even read his novel.