Has Sebastian Faulks talked his way out of becoming the next Salman Rushdie?

Well, no. You can't imagine it ever having got that far. But reactions to his comments on Islam have meant that his novel A Week In December (reviewed in next month's Third Way), was launched to a fanfare of furious backpedalling.
In the novel, the son of rich British Muslims is drawn to terrorism, and Faulks told the Times how he read the Qu'ran as research: 'It's a ...