Kazhes pierakstu burtnīca

It took me some time to get a hold of this book. You see, it never got published in Latvian and it can not be bought in Russian. As far as I`ve understood it`s banned or something like that. Weird things happen in the world. It`s not that scandalous - just a very good book. Anyhow there are three parallel stories taking place on the pages of this book. Or are there just two of them? Or is it four? I`m not so sure. The central line tells us about Saladin Chamcha and Gibreel Farishta - two Indian actors who survive a air-plane explosion and after that they somehow turn into respectively Satan and arch-angel Gabriel (Shaitan and Gibreel for the muslims). But the angel isn`t that good and satan that bad. Probably what bugged the muslims the most is another part of the story which tells us about Mahound (Mohammed) and his revelations from Gibreel (this story comes to Farishta in his sleep). It`s actually a bit similar with what Bulgakov wrote about Jesus. And the third story line is about Ayesha - a young woman that leads her whole village to Mecca on a pilgrimage. What`s weird is the outcome - you can`t really say, whether the ending was or wasn`t a lucky one for the pilgrims. This was certainly not an easy reading task by any means - Rushdie`s writing style, his choice of words, his structure of sentences aren`t easy to handle for a person like me that`s not too strong in English, but it was most certainly worth it. It was worth the time, the effort, for "Everything will be asked from us and everything will be given."