The Satanic Verses: 20 years on (and counting)

From the Observer: "According to Theroux, Chatwin's funeral 'was the high watermark of that decade's creative activity'. For Amis, Chatwin, a recent convert to Greek Orthodoxy, had played a last joke on his friends by subjecting them to 'a religion that no one he knew could understand or respond to'. If so, it was a joke destined to be overshadowed by a very different kind of theological offering that was far more of a challenge to understand or respond to. That same morning Rushdie had been informed of the fatwa issued by the Iranian leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, calling for his execution for the crime of writing a novel, The Satanic Verses."