One result of the Iranian reaction to...

One result of the Iranian reaction to Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” is that Rushdie’s wife, Marianne Wiggins, now in hiding, has canceled the national book tour which would have brought her to Los Angeles to talk about “John Dollar.” The tour was to include readings by Wiggins at Dutton’s Bookstore and Small World Books.

Reached by phone at her office in London on Feb. 8, a few days before Ayatolah Khomeini offered a reward for Rushdie’s death, Wiggins sounded happy and enthusiastic as she talked about her plans to visit California with the “Beloved Salman” to whom her latest book is dedicated.

Wiggins, a native of Pennsylvania, has lived in England for the last four years. She met Rushdie, who was born in India and is now a British citizen, while doing research on India for “John Dollar.” They were married in January, 1988.

Originally, Wiggins had planned for India to be the setting of her new book. When she learned that British colonists in India always sent their children back to England to school, she changed the location to Burma. This complicated the research, but she managed to authenticate her fictional British community, and to find Burmese details which added new dimensions to the story.

At first it seemed she had wasted a year researching India, Wiggins said, “But I had met this wonderful man, and I realized that that’s what that was about.” Asked why the book is titled “John Dollar,” Wiggins said that she is impressed with the power of the United States as perceived outside the United States. She wanted to write about this kind of power as expressed by Britain in the days of the Raj.

“The patriarchal attitude represented by John Dollar is the center of the book,” she said, then hastily added, “I hope it’s a thriller. You don’t have to suffer the meaning.”

She also wanted to write about the world as seen through children’s eyes, and to explore the “Lord of the Flies” themes with girls as protagonists. One notes with a certain grimness that both her book and William Golding’s earlier one are allegories of the decline of civilization.