Criticism > Short Story Criticism > Gordimer, Nadine (Vol. 17) - Salman Rushdie (essay date 1984)

Gordimer, Nadine (Vol. 17) - Salman Rushdie (essay date 1984)

Salman Rushdie (essay date 1984)

SOURCE: "No One Is Ever Safe," in The New York Times Book Review, July 29, 1984, pp. 7-8.

[An Indian novelist, nonfiction writer, and critic, Rushdie is best known for his controversial treatment of Islam in his novel The Satanic Verses (1988). In the review below, he provides a thematic treatment of Something Out There, focusing on Gordimer's theme of betrayal ]

Great white sharks, killer bees, werewolves, devils, alien horrors bursting from the chests of movie spacemen: The popular culture of our fearful times has provided us with so many variations on the ancient myth of the Beast, the "something" lurking out there that hunts us and is hunted by us, as to make it one of the defining metaphors of the age. In the jungle of the cities, we live among our accumulations of things behind doors garlanded with locks and chains, and find it all too easy to fear the unforeseeable, all-destroying...

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