Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, provoked one of the most publicised religiously-motivated outrages ever set off by a literary work.

Rushdie’s fictional and partly satiric portrayal of the prophet Muhammed has triggered shockwaves of response and retribution in which political (for instance, relating to the freedom of speech), religious, economic and cultural factors (for instance, relating to the role of the media) are combined. While the author himself has not hitherto come to grief, despite the fatwa pronounced against him, several of the less well-protected translators and publishers of the book have been threatened, assaulted and even killed.

This paper seeks to reconsider the novel in relation to the extra-literary 'Rushdie case' in a context of transcultural and postcolonial discourses of modernity. In analysing the ambivalent status of literature and religious sentiment, the paper will discuss the essentially paradoxical nature of the concept of blasphemy (does divinity need protection, how can irreverence hurt the inviolable?) and its functionalisation in an increasingly volatile cultural climate of transnational identity crises and multiculturalism.

Relating this instance of attempt to kill a book to transcultural considerations of boundaries as dynamic spaces, the paper will examine the notion of literary and fictional transgression in relation to the power and politics of textuality.