Thursday, September 25, 2014

Top twenty books they tried to ban

At the Telegraph Felicity Capon and Catherine Scott tagged twenty top famously banned books, including:
The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie

Rushdie's notorious book, inspired in part by the life of the Prophet Mohammed, famously resulted in Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini placing a fatwa (death sentence) on Rushdie for "insulting Islam". Violent demonstrations erupted against Rushdie around the world and several UK bookshops were firebombed for stocking the book. Most shockingly, Rushdie’s Japanese translator was murdered, his Italian translator wounded in a knife attack and his Norwegian publisher was shot and injured.
Read about another book on the list.

The Satanic Verses is among Seth Satterlee's top six famously banned books, Diarmaid MacCulloch's five best books about blasphemy, Atul Gawande's favorite books, and Karl O. Knausgaard's top ten angel books.

--Marshal Zeringue