London: Viking, 1988

8vo, pp. 547. Original blue boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Illustrated dust jacket, author's photographic portrait to rear panel. A fine copy in a fine dust jacket.

First edition, and a fine copy.

'Salman Rushdie, raised a Muslim, concluded that the Koran was a book made by the hands of men and was thus a fit subject for literary criticism and fictional borrowing. (Almost every historic battle for free expression, from Socrates to Galileo, has begun as a struggle over what is and is not "blasphemy".) In contrast, the very definition of a "fundamentalist" is someone who believes that "holy writ" is instead the fixed and unalterable word of god. For our time and generation, the great conflict between the ironic mind and the literal mind, the experimental and the dogmatic, the tolerant and the fanatical, is the argument that was kindled by The Satanic Verses.' (Christopher Hitchens, Assassins of the Mind, 2009)