Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses

Matthew Sweet presents a Night Waves Landmark dedicated to one of the most politically controversial novels of recent times: Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses. On Valentine's Day 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued his fatwa calling for Rushdie's death, forcing the novelist into hiding and creating an international cause célèbre, the reverberations of which can still be felt today. 20 years on, Matthew and a roundtable of guests from all sides of the dispute discuss the legacy of the Rushdie Affair. They explore the broader issues it raised: the value of freedom of expression, the question of whether art can offend, and the place of Islam and multiculturalism in British society.

The panel of guests are the film-maker Navid Akhtar, whose documentaries include Young Angry and Muslim; Jo Glanville, editor of Index on Censorship; Priyamvada Gopal, who teaches English at Cambridge University, and is the author of a new book, The Indian English Novel: Nation, History and Narration, the writer and broadcaster Kenan Malik, author of a new study called The Rushdie Affair – from Fatwa to Jihad, and the inter-faith theologian Martin Palmer.

The Indian English Novel: Nation, History, and Narration by Priyamvada Gopal is published by Oxford University Press.

The Rushdie Affair – from Fatwa to Jihad by Kenan Malik is published by Atlantic Books.