Review of Dewanand’s The Koran: Forbid or Rewrite

In the normal course of reviewing, I try to follow DH Lawrence’s dictum to ‘trust the tale, not the teller,’ despite my many misgivings about Lawrence’s own work. However, the author of the current book, Dewanand, introduces so much of himself into the text that it seems appropriate in this case at the least to introduce the concept of the authorial voice. I will start with a quote from p.111, in the introduction to an article (the book is really a compendium of articles, possibly ordered chronologically) entitled “Mohammed is Eighty Three Times Worse than Hitler”: “This article was originally written in the PI Nordsingel (House of Custody) at Rotterdam, cell CS16, on August 21, 2002.

Read the full review here, if you really wish.