Look Who it Was Random video

Peter Mayer - 'The Satanic Verses' (88/99)

73 views · Published 21 August 2017 · 2:48 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Entertainment

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British-born Peter Mayer (1936-2018) was an independent American publisher who, as head of the New York-based Avon Books, successfully introduced the trade paperback to the mass market. From 1978 to 1996, he was CEO of Penguin Books. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: September 2014-January 2015]

TRANSCRIPT: Just before the publication of the book, I read the manuscript on a plane.  I don't know - 20 hours, 26 hours - I've forgotten exactly how long - from New Zealand to London.  I've forgotten how the agent, who will have been either Gillon Aitken or Andrew Wiley, got it to me, or whether they simply sent it to my office.  My office managed to get it to me in New Zealand.  I don't know today, but I did read it.

And one of the other issues that emerged from that reading was how ignorant I was - and I could say that of nearly everybody I know who is not a Muslim - of the Koran, or of Islamic practice.  And, for example, I didn't know, when I, in reading 'The Satanic Verses', I didn't know that Mahound was a dirty word for Mohammed.  And I certainly didn't know that there was a strict prohibition on the, certainly, visual depiction of Mohammed, which might or might not extend to literary usages of either Mohammed or concepts of Mohammedism.  And I certainly didn't understand what represents blasphemy within the Koranic tradition.  And I certainly didn't realise how powerful mullahs were separately interpreting a book.

And I certainly didn't know that the ayatollah could read English.  Because, in fact, the book was available only in English.  I later found out that he did not know English.  So that, when the ayatollah issued his fatwa, he almost certainly had not read the book.

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