Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses

"The book that is worth killing people and burning flags for is not the book that I wrote," Salmon Rushdie, 41-year-old author of The Satanic Verses, told Time Magazine. shortly after its publication in 1988.

Rushdie's book caused deep rumblings among faithful Muslims offended by its content, prompting protests and book burnings and even riots in which several people were killed.

The furor reached new heights when Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini joined in, proclaiming the book a work of blasphemy and condemning Rushdie to death for "insulting Islam, the prophet Muhammed and the holy Koran."

Eager followers put a bounty on Rushdie's head, adding riches to what Khomeini had already guaranteed as a place in heaven for the successful assassin.

Aftershocks spread around the world as the issue became a more fundamental one -- that of the vast cultural differences between the East and West concerning morality and basic freedom.

Tremors were even felt in America's shopping malls as at least three major bookstore chains temporarily removed the books from their shelves in the interest of employee safety in the face of several threats.

As Rushdie saw it, his book "isn't actually about Islam but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay," he told Time.

The sad irony, he said, "is that after working for five years to give voice and fictional flesh to the immigrant culture of which I myself am a member, I should see my book burned, largely unread, by the people it's about -- people who might find some pleasure and much recognition in its pages."

Rushdie, born in India to Muslim parents, was reared in Bombay and educated in England. He also lived awhile in Pakistan before he became a British subject.

He no longer considers himself a Muslim, which makes the book all the more insulting to the members of the faith. He has been reviled by them as an "apostate," one who knows the truth and turns away from it. The traditional Muslim punishment for this is death.

"How fragile civilization is," Rushie reportedly wrote after Muslims in Britain set fire to his novel. "How easily, how merrily a book burns!"