Rushdie

The most poignant commemoration of the First Amendment this week came from a man not covered by it. As though popping out of a cake, Salman Rushdie appeared on a heavily guarded stage at Columbia University in New York to say that "Free speech is life itself."He should know. Since his novel, "The Satanic Verses," was seen to blaspheme Islam, Mr. Rushdie has been under sentence of death. In 1989, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, spiritual ruler of Iran, instructed the faithful to murder him. He lives in secret protective custody, his private life destroyed, at great expense to British taxpayers.

Shalimar the Clown By Salman Rushdie Max Ophuls, a brilliant former diplomat, is murdered in Los Angeles by his driver, a Kashmiri Muslim terrorist named Shalimar the Clown. That violent act is a piece of revenge extracted by the terrorist for Ophuls' affair with his wife, a beautiful Kashmiri dancer, years before. Rushdie weaves an extraordinarily vivid story of a global clash of cultures, describing the rich beauty of life in Kashmir with a fidelity that makes readers feel they are there.

In assessing President Clinton's meeting with the author Salman Rushdie, two points have to be kept very clear and separate: Everything the United States stands for must repudiate the right of the dictators of Iran to commission the murder of an Indian-born British subject who blasphemed Islam. But this is not endorsement of Mr. Rushdie's novel, "The Satanic Verses," which every reader is entitled to interpret individually, if able and willing to slog through it.In writing this large and convoluted tale, Mr. Rushdie was liberating himself from an Islamic heritage with the help of his English education, and also intending to shock.

Feb. 14 1895: Oscar Wilde's final play, The Importance of Being Earnest, opened at the St. James's Theatre in London. 1920: The League of Women Voters was founded in Chicago. 1989: Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini called on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses.

WHEN the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini first issued his decree against Salman Rushdie three years ago this month, I swear I thought it was a joke -- a very bad joke, a bit like "Papa Doc" Duvalier putting a voodoo curse on Graham Greene for writing "The Comedians," but a joke nevertheless, in the sense of being an example of furious but harmless flatulence -- just wind.I thought the death sentence would be laughed off -- condemned as despicable, and then mocked.Of course, I did not foresee much merriment about "The Satanic Verses" in any Islamic state, where building blueprints have to be submitted to a board of Islamic scholars, the ulema, so that the authorities can make sure that no toilet faces Mecca.

"White Teeth," by Zadie Smith. Random House. 462 pages. $29.95. Not since Mary Shelley composed "Frankenstein" at the age of 19 has a bookish young woman made such an extraordinary debut. In this case, "White Teeth" was written during 24-year-old Zadie Smith's spare time at Cambridge University. But make no mistake: it's no Brideshead Regurgitated. Instead, this novel has zest. It bubbles and pops in its imaginative intensity. Smith's intent: a comic portrayal of what it means to be "ethnic."

LONDON -- Author Salman Rushdie, in his first television interview since going into hiding 18 months ago, says he is sorry for any hurt his novel "The Satanic Verses" may have caused."

LONDON -- He has been on the run for six years, hiding under armed guard in a network of safe houses.Now, with old passions fading and a new book to sell, British author Salman Rushdie is ending the seclusion imposed by a zealot's death sentence.As a survivor, he is sadly wiser in the ways of the world, Mr. Rushdie says, but no less disposed to speak his mind."One of the things a writer is for is REUTERSSalman Rushdieto say the unsayable, to speak the unspeakable, to ask difficult questions," he said a week ago at his first announced appearance in public since being sentenced to death by Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989 for alleged blasphemy against Islam.

LONDON -- Salman Rushdie, still under Islamic death threat for writing "The Satanic Verses," carried his appeal against the sentence yesterday to the Iranians who imposed it.In a broadcast on the Persian service of the BBC's World Service, he said: "You know I have never been the enemy of Islam. I have never been this figure with horns and a tail. I am not the sort of person who would have written a book attacking Islam."He said his book had been "much misunderstood." He asserted that his book was not blasphemous and said all the "so-called insults" were "contained in the dreams of a man who was going mad, and the reason he was going mad was because he had lost his faith in Islam."

Salman Rushdie, the author of "The Satanic Verses," who has lived in hiding for nearly a decade as the object of an open-ended Islamic death sentence, was married in secret on Thursday in the Hamptons on Long Island.The details of the wedding were not given, but Andrew Wylie, Rushdie's agent, said yesterday, "Elizabeth and Salman Rushdie are happy to confirm that they were married on Thursday, Aug. 28, in a small ceremony."Newspaper reporters in London, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the new Mrs. Rushdie, whose maiden name is being withheld to protect her safety, is a poet who had collaborated with Rushdie on an anthology of modern Indian writing.

One by one, the season's new arrivals beckon, waving us over to the tables on which they lounge so seductively: Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie gives us a come-hither look. The March by E.L. Doctorow whispers low and sweet in our ear. Zadie Smith's On Beauty provocatively flutters its pages. Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee flips open its cover and spreads out before us on its spine. It's so tempting to sample the merchandise. And who, really, does it hurt? So many great new books, so little money.

NOVEL SHALIMAR THE CLOWN By Salman Rushdie. Random House. 416 pages. It circumnavigates the globe and the last half of the 20th century like a hyperactive satellite, but Salman Rushdie's rich and restless new novel, Shalimar the Clown, has an ominous stillness at its center. Its title character is a dangerous cipher. We are supposed to believe that he is driven to homicidal monomania by romantic betrayal, but the heart of this Muslim Kashmiri is opaque. Shalimar the Clown makes vivid stopovers in 1990s Los Angeles and resistance-era France, but the novel's true home is the gorgeous, viciously contested land of Kashmir.

It would be improbable for me to dislike a book by Salman Rushdie. He has written seven previous novels, a collection of short fiction and four nonfiction books. I have read much of that, and he has yet to fail me. He goes on growing - on me, at least. Now comes Fury (Random House, 259 pages, $24.95). It's remarkably short, concise, in contrast to his superb and sprawling The Moor's Last Sigh (1996, 434 pages) and The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999, 575 pages). Rushdie narrates Fury in a voice that is cosmopolitan, confiding and casual.

"White Teeth," by Zadie Smith. Random House. 462 pages. $29.95. Not since Mary Shelley composed "Frankenstein" at the age of 19 has a bookish young woman made such an extraordinary debut. In this case, "White Teeth" was written during 24-year-old Zadie Smith's spare time at Cambridge University. But make no mistake: it's no Brideshead Regurgitated. Instead, this novel has zest. It bubbles and pops in its imaginative intensity. Smith's intent: a comic portrayal of what it means to be "ethnic."

New York -- A queue is wrapped around Cooper Union in west Greenwich Village. It is 6:20 p.m. on Tuesday, April 13, and in 40 minutes, Salman Rushdie is scheduled to give his first reading open to the American public in more than a decadeThe event coincides with publication of "The Ground Beneath Her Feet," the longest and most ambitious of Rushdie's seven novels. His appearance defies a decree that he be put to death.Ten years and two months ago, Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini informed all Muslims of the world that Rushdie "and all those involved in ['The Satanic Verses,' his fourth novel's]

"The Ground Beneath Her Feet," by Salman Rushdie. Henry Holt. 578 pages. $27.50.It's the best thing ever written about rock and roll. It is rock and roll. Most of such writing is dumb or preening or just doesn't get it. The trouble with rock and roll is the words (half of them never get heard) and the music (very simple and so loud you can hardly hear it). So what is it? Why is it important? Because it's force. It's animal, human, spiritual power! It's exclamation, not explanation. It's experience, not explication.

Despite his recent series of public -- determinedly public -- appearances, Indian-born British novelist Salman Rushdie must realize that danger stalks him still. He is rightly suspicious of what he calls the "charm offensive" by Iranian officials who say their government no longer intends to carry out the fatwa issued against Mr. Rushdie seven years ago by the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. (That death sentence, accompanied by a $1 million bounty, was handed down for the alleged slanders of Islam in the novel, "The Satanic Verses."

LONDON -- The 22-month-old Islamic death sentence on author Salman Rushdie still stands despite his repentance this week for offending Moslems with his book "The Satanic Verses," according to spiritual leaders in Iran and Britain.They rejected Mr. Rushdie's renewal of his own Islamic faith and his promise not to allow publication of a paperback version of the book as sufficient grounds for lifting the death threat.The author's shift would not change the "divine ruling" that his blasphemy must be punished by death, said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious ruler of Iran.

NEW DELHI, India -- Salman Rushdie has been granted a visa to return to India, his native land, whose banning of his novel "The Satanic Verses" began a chain of events that led to death threats by offended Muslims and a life in hiding for a writer with a price on his head.The decision was confirmed yesterday by a spokesman for the Ministry of External Affairs and prompted immediate threats of violent demonstrations. "We will protest within a constitutional framework, but I warn the government of India that a righteous follower of the Holy Prophet may make an attempt on Rushdie's life, and each Muslim will be proud of this person," said Syed Ahmad Bukhari, deputy priest of Jama Masjid, the best-known mosque in new Delhi.

SALMAN Rushdie seemed to think that the announcement by Iran's government that it no longer sought his death made him a free man. The Indian-born British author had been living underground since the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a decree in 1989 proclaiming the duty of all Muslims to kill him.Now Iran's government dissociates itself from that decree. Its bounty for the murder of a British citizen had violated British sovereignty, put Iran beyond the pale of international law and poisoned relations with London.