Gillian Greenwood
Haroun in Hindsight
The publication of Salman Rushdie’s first book since The Satanic Verses has been and gone without upset or incident, a fact for which most of us will be grateful. Not that this should be surprising. There is nothing in the new book to offend on the scale of the content of The Satanic Verses, and however insoluble the mutual incomprehension between Islam and the West, most of us eventually grasped the point that The Satanic Verses nightmare was and continues to be a genuine reaction to a specific, if undeliberate, provocation, a reaction which was subsequently manipulated for a variety of political ends.
If there was no drama there was quite a lot of ballyhoo. I must declare an interest here as I produced a television film and interview with Mr Rushdie which caused a certain amount of press excitement. Publication day also coincided (quite by chance as far as I know) with
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Within hours, the news spread. A grimy gang of desperadoes had been captured just in time to stop them setting out on an assassination plot of shocking audacity.'
@katheder on the Cato Street Conspiracy of 1820.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/butchers-knives-treason-and-plot
'It is the ... sketches of the local and the overlooked that lend this book its density and drive, and emphasise Britain’s mostly low-key riches – if only you can be bothered to buy an anorak and seek.'
Jonathan Meades on the beauty of brutalism.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/castles-of-concrete
'Cruickshank’s history reveals an extraordinary eclecticism of architectural styles and buildings, from Dutch Revivalism to Arts and Crafts experimentation, from Georgian terraces to Victorian mansion blocks.'
William Boyd on the architecture of Chelsea.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/where-george-eliot-meets-mick-jagger