"The most important piece of literature in the past half century was written by Salman Rushdie, an indian."

Really? I'd put Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago way ahead of anything else I've read from the past half-century for importance. Or do you not consider that literature because it's nonfiction?

Either way, what was so important about the Satanic Verses (or do you mean a different book by Rushdie?) besides the fact that it pissed off some religious dictator?