Program: Newly revealed letters on The Satanic Verses controversy

It was the novel that sparked a geopolitical crisis. In 1988, Iran's leader Ayatollah Khomeini imposed a death sentence on Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses. Rushdie has escaped death, but in 2022 he lost an eye after an attack at a writer's festival in New York. 

Now, once-secret letters between the British and Malaysian prime ministers reveal the extent of tension between the West and Islamic world in the wake of the book's release. 

Associate Professor David Smith uncovered this correspondence. He's an expert on US politics at the University of Sydney, and he's recently written for The Conversation.