I have drawn on these books and articles in creating these notes. However, this is far from being a comprehensive bibliography of scholarship on The Satanic Verses, nor is it intended to be a list of the best sources. Rather it consists primarily of sources which provided assistance in tracking down allusions in the novel. Many fine interpretive articles and books are not listed.
Unfortunately I cannot cite some of my most useful sources, since they involved personal communication with persons who did not wish to be cited by name. However, out of many others I am happy to thank Massud Alemi, Martine Dutheil, Paul Harmer, Azfar Hussain, Suzanne Keene, Joel Kuortti, Sudhakar Chandrasekhara, Ina Westphal, Mel Wiebe, David Windsor and James Woolley for identifying various references.
Special thanks are due to Salman Rushdie, who kindly answered some particularly knotty questions and made a number of helpful suggestions about this project. His contributions are marked “personal communication from Salman Rushdie.” This statement should not, however, be taken to imply his endorsement of this site either in its entirety or in detail.
Ahsan, M. M. “The Satanic Verses and the Orientalists,” Hamdard Islamicus 5:1 (1982), repr. rev. in Sacrilege versus Civility: Muslim Perspectives on The Satanic Verses Affair, eds. M.M. Ahsan & A.R. Kidwai (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 1993 (1991).
Al-‘Azm, Sadik Jalal. “The Importance of Being Earnest About Salman Rushdie.” in M. D. Fletcher, ed. Reading Rushdie: Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie. Amsterdam: Rodopi B. V., 1994, pp. 255-292.
Albertazzi, Silvia. “In the Skin of a Whale: Salman Rushdie’s Responsibility for the Story” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 12.1 (1989): 11-18.
Al-Kalbi, Hisham Ibn. The Book of Idols: Being a Translation from the Arabic of the Kitab Al-Asnam by Hisham Ibn-Al-Kalbi. Translated Nabih Amin Faris. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952.
al-Kisa’i. The Tales of the Prophets of al-Kisa’i, translated from the Arabic with Notes by W. M. Thackston, Jr. G. K. Hall: Twayne Publishers, 1978.
Ali, Agha Shahid. “The Satanic Verses: A Secular Muslim’s Response,” The Yale Journal of Crticism 4.1 (1990/1991): 295-300.
[Apuleius, Lucius.] The Transformations of Lucius, Otherwise Known as The Golden Ass, by Lucius Apuleius, trans. Robert Graves (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1955).
Aravamudan, Srinivas. “Being God’s Postman is No Fun, Yaar’: Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.” Diacritics 19.2 (1989): 3-20.
Aravamudan, Srinivas. “Novels of Salman Rushdie, The: Mediated Reality as Fantasy.” World Literature Today 63.1 (1989): 42-45.
Bader, Rudolf. “The Satanic Verses: An Intercultural Experiment by Salman Rushdie,” International Fiction Review 19 (Summer 1992): 65-75.
Armstrong, Karen (1991) Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet. London: Victor Gollancz, 1991.
Balderston, Daniel. “The Art of Pastiche: Argentina in The Satanic Verses,” Revista de Estudos Hispanicos (Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico) 17-18 (1990-1991): 301-308.
Bashier, Zakaria. The Makkan Crucible rev.ed. Leicester: Islamic Foundation 1991 (1975).
Barràs, Maria Llüisa. Picabia. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.
Radha Balasubramanian, “The Similarities between Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses” in The International Fiction Review 22 (1995): 37-.
Beckett, Samuel. The Complete Dramatic Works. London: Faber and Faber, 1986.
Bevan, David, ed. Literature and Exile. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990.
Bond, Edward. Lear. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.
Booker, M. Keith. “Finnegan’s Wake and The Satanic Verses: Two Modern Myths of the Fall.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 32.3 (1991): 190-207.
Brennan, Timothy. Salman Rushdie and the Third World: Myths of the Nation. New York:St. Martin Press, 1989.
“Braniff Refuels on Razzle-Dazzle,” Business Week Nov. 29, 1965, p. 110.
“Chu Chin Chow,” The Times (London), September 1, 1916, p. 9.
Comerford, R. V.: “Ireland Under the Union, II, 1870-1921,” in W. E. Vaughan, ed. A New History of Ireland, Vol. VI. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 26-52.
Cornwell, Neil. “Rushdie,” in The Literary Fantastic (Brighton & New York: Harvester, 1990): 184-197.
Dashti, Ali. Twenty Three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad, trans. F. R. C. Bagley. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985.) (Originally published anonymously as Bist o Seh Sal, 1974?)
della Femina, Jerry. From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor: Front-Line Dispatches from the Advertising War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970.
Dhondy, Farrukh. Bombay Duck. London: Jonathan Cape, 1990.
Dimmitt, Richard Bertrand. A Title Guide to the Talkies: A Comprehensive Listing of 16,000 Feature-Length Films From October, 1927, Until December, 1963. New York: The Scarecrow Press, 1965.
Donoso, José. The Obscene Bird of Night, trans. Hardie St. Martin and Leonard Mades (Alfred A. Knopf, 1973; reprint, Boston: David R. Godine, 1979). Originally in Spanish as El obsceno pájaro de la noche (Barcelona: Editorial Seix Barral, S. A., 1970).
Dutheil de la Rochère, Martine Hennard. Origin and Originality in Rushdie’s Fiction. Bern: Peter Lang, 1999.
Easterman, Daniel. “What is Fundamental to Islam?” in New Jerusalems: Reflections on Islam, Fundamentalism, and the Rushdie Affair. London: Grafton, 1992, pp. 29-44.
Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo. Rome: Casa editrice Le Maschere, 1954, vol. 10.
Engblom, Philip. “A Multitude of Voices: Carnivalization and Dialogicality in the Novels of Salman Rushdie,” in D. Fletcher, ed. Reading Rushdie: Perspectives on the Fiction of Salman Rushdie. Amsterdam: Rodopi B. V., 1994, pp. 293-304.
Fargnoli, A. Nicholas and Michael Patrick Gillespie. James Joyce A to Z: The Essential Reference to the Life and Work. New York: Facts on File, 1995.
Faris, Nabih. Introduction to (1952) al-Kabli: The Book of Idols. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952. Fehilly, Carole B., S. M. Willadsen & Elizabeth M. Tucker: “Interspecific Chimaerism Between Sheep and Goat,” Nature, 307:5952 (February 16-22, 1984), pp. 634-636.
Fischer, Michael M. & Mehdi Abedi. “Bombay Talkies, the Word and the World: Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses,” Cultural Anthropology 5.2 (1990): 107-159. Reprinted in Michael M.J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi: Debating Muslims: Cultural Dialogues in Postmodernity and Tradition. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
Fraser, Antonia. Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restauration. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979.
Gibb, H. A. R. & J. H. Kramers. “Izra’il” Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Pr., [1953].
Glasser, Alfred. “Carmen.” The Lyric Opera Companion: The History, Lore and Stories of the World’s Greatest Operas. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1991, p. 67.
Gooneratne, Yasmine. “Images of Indian Exile in Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Three Continents.” In David Bevan, ed. Literature and Exile. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990, pp. 7-21.
Götje, Helmut: The Qur’an and Its Exegesis: Selected Texts with Classical and Modern Muslim Interpretations, tr. Alford T. Welch. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976.
Gurewich, David. “Piccadilly’s Scheherazade.” The New Criterion 7.7 (1989): 68-72.
Gramsci, Antonio. “State and Civil Society,” in Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, ed. & trans. Quentin Hoare & Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971.
Hamilton, Ian. “The First Life of Salman Rushdie,” The New Yorker, December 25, 1995/January 1, 1996, pp. 90, 92-97, 99-102, 104-108, 110, 112-113.
Hanne, Michael. “Salman Rushdie: ‘The Satanic Verses’ (1988)” in The Power of the Story: Fiction and Political Change. Providence: Berghahn Books, 1994, pp. 192-243.
Haykal, Muhammad Husayn. The Life of Muhammad, 8th ed., trans. Isma’il Ragi A. al Faruqi (N.p.: North American Trust Publications, 1976). Orig. Hayat Muhammad (1935).
Ibn Ishaq. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat rasul Allah, ed. Abdu’l-Malik, Ibn Hisham, trans. A[lfred] Guillaume. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1990 (1955).
Iqbal, Anwar , “I Borrowed my Expressions from the East,” (interview with Rushdie), The Muslim Magazine, Nov. 1983.
Jiwa, Salim. The Death of Air India Flight 182. London: W. H. Allen, 1986.
“Judge Defends Racial Slurs,” in Facts on File World News Digest, January 13, 1978, p. 18, D1.
Jussawalla, Feroza. “Rushdie’s Dastan-e-Dilruba: The Satanic Verses as Rushdie’s Love Letter to Islam,” in Diacritics 26 (Spring 1996): 50-73.
Jussawalla, Feroza. “Post-Joycean/Sub-Joycean: The Reverses of Mr. Rushdie’s Tricks in The Satanic Verses,” in Viney Kripal, ed. The New Indian Novel in English: A Study of the 1980s. New Delhi: Allied Publishers Ltd., 1990, pp. 227-337.
Jussawalla, Feroza. “Resurrecting the Prophet: The Case of Salman, the Otherwise.” Public Culture 2.1 (1989): 106-17.
Kuortti, Joel. Place of the Sacred: The Rhetoric of the Satanic Verses Affair. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1997.
Lawson, Mark. “Fishing for Salman,” The Independent Magazine, September 10, 1988, pp 58-62.
Loomis, Carol J. “As the World Turns–On Madison Avenue,” Fortune 78 (Dec. 1968), 114-117.
Matthiessen, F. O. The James Family: Including Selections from the Writings of Henry James, Senior, William, Henry & Alice James. N.Y.: Knopf, 1947.
Mojtabai, A. G. “Magical Mystery Pilgrimage,” New York Times Book Review Jan. 29 1989, pp. 3, 37.
Moorhouse, Geoffrey. India Britannica. London: Harvill Press, 1983.
Muir, William. The Life of Mohammad from Original Sources, rev ed., ed. T.H. Weir (New York: AMS Press Inc., 1975 (1923).
Nazareth, Peter. “Rushdie’s Wo/manichean Novel.” The Iowa Review 20.1 (Winter 1990): 168-174.
Netton, Ian Richard. A Popular Dictionary of Islam. London: Curzon Press/Atlantic Highlands, 1992.
Netton, Ian Richard. Text and Trauma: An East-West Primer. Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996.
Newby, Gordon D. “Satan,” The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, ed. John L. Esposito. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Parekh, Bhikhu. “Between Holy Text and Moral Void,” New Statesman and Society. March 24, 1989, pp. 29-33.
Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription, ed. Robert Latham & William Matthews. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1972, Vol. VII, p. 271.
Petersson, Margareta. Unending Metamorphoses: Myth, Satire and Religion in Salman Rushdie’s Novels. Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1996.
Pipes, Daniel. The Rushdie Affair: The Ayatollah, the Novelist and the West. NY: Birch Lane Press, 1990.
Robbins, Rossell Hope. “Matthew Hopkins,” in The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology. New York: Crown, 1970.
Rodinson, Maxime. Mohammed. Trans. Anne Carter. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.
Rushdie, Salman. “The Book Burning,” The New York Review of Books, March 2, 1989, p. 26.
Rushdie, Salman. “Choice between Light and Dark,” The Observer, January 22, 1989, p.11.
Rushdie, Salman. “The Empire Writes Back with a Vengeance,” (London) Times July 3, 1982, p. 8.
Rushdie, Salman. “Homage to Satyajit Ray,” The London Review of Books, March 8, 1990, p. 9.
Rushdie, Salman. “How News Becomes Opinion, And Opinion Off-Limits,” The Nation, June 24, 1996, pp.18-20.
Rushdie, Salman. “In God We Trust,” in Imaginary Homelands (London: Granta, 1991): 376-432. An earlier version was written in 1985.
Rushdie, Salman. “In Good Faith,” in Imaginary Homelands (London: Granta, 1991): 393-414. Originally published 1990.
Rushdie, Salman. “Imaginative Maps” (Interview with Una Chaudhuri), in Turnstile 2:1 (1990): 36-47.
Rushdie, Salman. “Is Nothing Sacred?” Granta 31 (1990): 97-110.
Ruthven, Malise. A Satanic Affair: Salman Rushdie and the Rage of Islam. London: Chatto & Windus, 1990.
Rushdie, Salman. “The Indian Writer in England,” in The Eye of the Beholder: Indian Writing in English, ed. Maggie Butcher (London: Commonwealth Institute, 1983), pp. 75-83.
Rushdie, Salman. “Minority Literatures in a Multi-Cultural Society,” in Displaced Persons, ed. Kirsten Holst Peterson and Anna Rutherford (Mundelstrup: Dangaroo Press, 1988).
Sadhu, J.N. “Sigh at Last,” in Aside, January 1, 1996, pp.20-23.
Sardar, Ziauddin & Merryl Wyn Davies. Distorted Imagination: Lessons from the Rushdie Affair. London: Grey Seal, 1990.
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Spivak, Gayatri C. “Reading The Satanic Verses,” Third Text ll (1990): 41-60. Reprinted from Public Culture 2:1 (Fall 1989).
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