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The raging battle of Brick Lane

Paul Lewis

Salman Rushdie vs Germaine Greer over amovie under production in the U.K.

London: It began as a territorial dispute between a low-budget film production company and a group of Bengali traders determined to protect the reputation of the community living in Britain's best-known Asian street.

But the battle of Brick Lane, which this week saw the producers of a film based on a novel by one of Britain's promising young writers take police advice and abandon filming in the street, has spiralled into a war of words between literary giants.

As the debate over a screen version of Monica Ali's book Brick Lane continues, Salman Rushdie, the author who in 1989 received a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeinei in the wake of the publication of his book The Satanic Verses, has entered the fray with an attack on a longstanding rival, Germaine Greer.

In a letter published in the U.K. on Saturday, which is expected to reignite a row which has simmered since the 1990s, Rushdie denounces Greer's support for the Brick Lane activists who are attempting to block the film as: "philistine, sanctimonious, and disgraceful, but it is not unexpected."

"As I well remember, she has done this before," he continues. "At the height of the assault against my novel The Satanic Verses, Germaine Greer stated `I refuse to sign petitions for that book of his, which was about his own troubles'. She went on to describe me as `a megalomaniac, an Englishman with dark skin'. Now it's Monica Ali's turn to be deracinated by Germaine."

Rushdie's complaints about Greer point to an interview published in women's magazine Mirabella in 1992 in which she allegedly said she would not support him in the face of protests against his book. She is also reported to have said: "Jail is a good place for writers — they write. I told Salman that. Now he won't see me. He wouldn't accept my Christmas Eve invitation."

Greer, who attended Cambridge University in the late 1960s with Rushdie, later denied the report, stating: "It is clearly not what I think of Salman." Rushdie, however, was unconvinced saying after the affair: "[Greer] keeps saying rude things about me...and about other people — then claiming she has been misquoted." Greer declined to comment on the latest round of her spat with Rushdie, but sources close to her suggested she is considering a written response to the debate.

The Campaign Against Monica Ali's Film Brick Lane, which Greer is accused of backing, says Ali's portrayal of London's Bangladeshi community and, in particular, her depiction of people from the Sylhet region, is insulting. The campaign has been opposed by many in Brick Lane who support the film.

In an article in The Guardian on Monday Greer defended attempts by Brick Lane locals to prevent filming of the movie on their streets. "Ali did not concern herself with the possibility that her plot might seem outlandish to the people who created the particular culture of Brick Lane," she wrote.

"As British people know little and care less about the Bangladeshi people in their midst, their first appearance as characters in an English novel had the force of a defining caricature."

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

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