Every Rushdie novel in one way or another recapitulates this loss; the very feverishness and excess of his prose tries to summon Bombay's beloved chaos, an effort that sometimes proves fatal to the novels themselves.

Although there have been protests by Muslims in Japan against the Rushdie novel, there has been nothing like the Ayatollah Khomeini's pronouncement of a death sentence that forced the the author into hiding.

Almost every day, customers come into the crammed Malhotra family store and ask quietly for the Rushdie novel.

The Rushdie novel was the No. 2 fiction book for three weeks because it had sold out and reorders were unavailable for several weeks.

In comments published Sunday, the newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said that millions of Muslims had been offended by the Rushdie novel.

The new Rushdie novel, "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," will be published in Britain by Granta on Sept. 27 and in the United States in January.

Canada at first considered using trade laws to bar the Rushdie novel, but then relented.

The heroine of the Rushdie novel, the rock star Vina Apsara, inspires Diana-like, media-crazed mourning when she dies.

But unlike the Rushdie novel, the Kazantzakis novel, first published in the United States in 1960, was reprinted last summer without incident in this country.

That decision follows by one day the Waldenbooks decision to remove the Rushdie novel from the shelves of its 1,200 stores.