The Tailor of Panama had labelled him anti-Semitic for his portrayal of one of the novel's characters. Rushdie responded that he wished Le Carre had expressed similar feelings after Rushdie was subject to a fatwa for "The Satanic Verses", viewed as anti-Islamic by some Muslims. Rushdie opined that Le Carre was an "illiterate, pompous ass," while Le Carre replied that Rushdie was a "self-canonizing, arrogant colonialist." "Guardian" columnist Mark Lawson claimed the two authors appeared to be 'settling old scores', stating that: "The Collected Guardian Correspondence of Salman Rushdie and John Le Carre is in the great tradition of literary poison pen letters: both
The Satanic Verses controversy "a mere hundred copies a week of the book in mid-January 1989", it "flew off the shelves" following the fatwa. In America it sold an "unprecedented" five times more copies than the number two book, "Star" by Danielle Steel, selling more than 750,000 copies of the book by May 1989. B. Dalton, a bookstore chain that decided not to stock the book for security reasons, changed its mind when it found the book "was selling so fast that even as we tried to stop it, it was flying off the shelves". Rushdie earned about $2 million within the first year