September’s Monday Book Club selection picks up on a theme the group explored earlier this summer: surviving disasters.

Salman Rushdie’s 1988 novel “The Satanic Verses” incited a fury among Muslims worldwide and led the Iranian ayatollah to call for his execution; it also made Rushdie a household name among book lovers. In the years since, much of the anger over the book has died down and Rushdie no longer fears for his life. Still, the book remains controversial and seems a logical choice to kick off the Book Club’s series on banned books.

Rushdie

The plot follows Indian movie star Gibreel Farishta and Bombay ex-patriate Saladin Chamcha after they survive a terrorist bombing of a jetliner. The plane explodes over the English Channel and the men fall to the ground and are found on a British beach. In a lengthy, often convoluted story that critics describe as “whimsical” and “fanciful,” Rushdie chronicles their struggles for identity and transformation.

On some levels, the book echoes the mystifying plot of Yann Martel’s “Life of Pi,” which the book club discussed in July. Rushdie’s tale, however, seems more epic. Critics often compare his work to the magic realism of Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. The writer himself describes the book as “a migrant’s-eye view of the world. It is written from the very experience of uprooting, disjuncture and metamorphosis (slow or rapid, painful or pleasurable) that is the migrant condition, and from which, I believe, can be derived a metaphor for all humanity.”

Rushdie is the author of several novels, including “Midnight’s Children” (Booker Prize, 1980); “The Moor’s Last Sigh” (Whitbread Award, 1995). “Verses” also brought him a Whitbread Award.

The Book Club will meet to discuss the novel at 6 p.m. Sept. 25 at Taylor Books, 225 Capitol St.

To contact Regina Holbert, use e-mail or call 348-7936.