The art of fiction: Salman Rushdie

Sir Salman Rushdie has been in the news this week, after his proposed appearance at the Jaipur Literary Festival elicited criticism from what the Guardian described as an ‘influential conservative Indian Muslim cleric’, called Maulana Abul Qasim Nomani.

A little over a year ago, Rushdie appeared on American TV (above) and said that the world had moved on from furores and fatwahs caused by The Satanic Verses. Now people can read it as a novel, he said, as it was intended. Rushdie is apparently putting the finishing touches to his memoirs, which will be published later this year. It will be interesting to see how much space Rushdie devotes to the controversy, and how he regards it within the context of his life and writing as a whole. The episode in Jaipur suggests that reactionary Muslims, at least, are not moving on. There must be a danger that Rushdie’s artistic legacy will be mared by the perpetual hollering of the Ayatollahs, which would be a travesty: the world’s