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The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea seeking a direction to ban Salman Rushdie's controversial novel "The Satanic Verses". The plea came up for hearing before a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta. The counsel appearing for the petitioners referred to the Delhi High Court's November last year order. The high court had closed the proceedings on a petition challenging the Rajiv Gandhi government's decision to ban the import of "The Satanic Verses" in 1988, saying since authorities have failed to produce the relevant notification, it has to be presumed that it does not exist. "You are effectively challenging the judgement of the Delhi High Court," the bench observed, while dismissing the plea. The petition was filed in the apex court through advocate Chand Qureshi. It alleged the book was available due to the order passed by the high court. The Centre had banned the import of the Booker Prize-winning author's "The Satanic Verses" for law-and-order rea
Booker Prize-winning author Kiran Desai on Tuesday returned to the coveted literary award longlist with The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny', a novel described by the judges as a vast and immersive tale about a pair of young Indians in America. The 53-year-old Delhi-born author, who won the Booker Prize 19 years ago in 2006 with The Inheritance of Loss', joins 12 writers from around the world for the so-called Booker Dozen of 13 books that will be whittled down to six shortlisted titles by September. Desai's latest novel stands out as the longest on the longlist, weighing in at 667 pages and published by Hamish Hamilton. The shortest is "Universality" by Natasha Brown at 156 pages. "She has spent almost 20 years writing The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny'. Should she win this year, she would become the fifth double winner in the prize's 56-year history, Booker Prize Foundation said in a statement. Desai has a family history with the prize: her mother Anita Desai was shortlisted for th