Sacred Cows: A Portrait of Britain, Post-Rushdie, Pre-Utopia

Chatto CounterBlasts #4

by Fay Weldon

43p paperback, a fresh and clean copy, signed by the author, excellent condition, this copy published in the year 1989 in the series entitled Chatto Counterblasts

43 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Fay Weldon CBE was an English author, essayist and playwright, whose work has been associated with feminism. In her fiction, Weldon typically portrayed contemporary women who find themselves trapped in oppressive situations caused by the patriarchal structure of British society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fay_Weldon

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Written about and in the aftermath of the Salman Rushdie The Satanic Verses fatwa, Weldon was right to defend his work against the death threats imposed by a theocratic government, but she was wrong to use Islamophobia to do so. While she has some criticism for Christianity, she still extolls the Bible as being “a superior revalatory work to the Koran“. As an atheist, it all leaves a nasty taste in my mouth.

She does reserve a good degree of ire for Murdoch, sexism, tabloid journalism, “dumbed down“ media, and what now we would recognise as austerity politics, and despite levelling criticism at the racist and fascist organisation The National Front, much of the language and sentiment she used is too freely spouted now by the heirs to the NF and by “mainstream“ right-wing demogogues.

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I dug this out for a second time this morning after hearing of a book being pulped in India because it made some (hindu) zealots angry. It's Weldon's answer to the fatwah against Rushdie in the late 80's. What struck me, on a second read, was how I was almost nostalgic for a time when threats against an author was about as far as violence from religious lunatics could get in its incursions into our consciousness. Hi ho. The tone of the book as a whole is laughably panic-stricken as she sees a future with only two choices: mumbling, brutalised secularism numbed into insensibility by bad TV, or Islam and - to use her phrase - "kill, kill, kill". As a snapshot of a historical moment, it is interesting but you won't get anything fresh here, I'm afraid, and you might feel slightly embarrassed for her by the time you finish it's 40-odd pages.

[Indigo Pellegrini]

Tbh had to read it for class and kinda feel it was a wasted 2 hours of my life