SOURCE: "Tower of Babble," in Maclean's, Vol. 108, No. 41, October 9, 1995, p. 85.

In the following negative review of The Moor's Last Sigh, Bemrose remarks that "most of the novel reads like the vision of a harried mind that has lost touch with the pace and amplitude of ordinary life."

It would seem that Salman Rushdie simply does not know how to play it safe. The Anglo-Indian novelist has been in hiding in Britain for six years, ever since Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned him to death for alleged anti-Muslim sentiments in his 1989 novel, The Satanic Verses. Now, his new novel, The Moor's Last Sigh—nominated for Britain's prestigious Booker Prize last week—has angered many Hindus. The Indian distributor of the book has refused to release it in Bombay, where a radical Hindu political party, Shiv Sena, has deemed it offensive. The trouble stems from a character in the novel...