Several weeks ago, a Guardian article asked disbelievingly why the readers among us remained in thrall to the heavyweight literary quartet of Amis, Barnes, McEwan and Rushdie. Disregarding the obvious - that all four writers are at least a decade past the genuinely ground-breaking and forward-looking work once produced by two or three of them - this question reveals more about the intellectual laziness and commercial opportunism of many publishers, and the media and literary cliques which remain in obeisance to these four at a time when a vast diversity of imaginative, daring and engaging writers has risen struggling towards the light beneath the spreading shadows of this solid and unmoving foursome.

And here, following his misjudged foray into the world of popular music, comes Rushdie's latest, Fury. This, according to the advance publicity, is a work of pitch-black comedy, a profoundly disturbing inquiry into the darkest side of human nature, and a love story of mesmerising force. Even allowing for the excesses of the publicist's trade, it is none of these things, and the honest reader will quickly feel deceived by all these outrageous claims.

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