Joking that it was "definitely the first time I've ever read in a church," the Indian novelist Salman Rushdie read before several hundred people Monday night at the First Parish Church of Cambridge.

The reading was the final stop in a month-long book tour across the United States, and also kicked off the Harvard Square Book Festival, which runs May 10-16. The Boston Phoenix, a weekly listings newspaper, co-sponsored the reading.

Rushdie, whose 1989 novel The Satanic Verses provoked a worldwide controversy and a death sentence from Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini, read an excerpt from his latest book, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, published last month.

An author whose novels have consistently irked authority figures both religious and secular, Rushdie made no exception on Monday, selecting an excerpt that satirized corruption in the Indian government.

Rushdie described his book as "a rock-and-roll novel" recounting the lives of two Indian musicians whose band reaches international superstardom, as told through the eyes of their confidante Rai Merchant.

But the excerpt Rushdie chose on Monday diverged from that theme, focusing on the beginning of Rai's career as a photographer and the exposure of a nationwide scam.

It also developed the theme of the urban-rural divide in contemporary India, and indulged Rushdie's preference for the magical realist genre.

In an allusive moment, Rushdie closed the reading with a passage that reprised Molly Bloom's monologue at the end of James Joyce's "Ulysses."

"I just pinched it," Rushdie said. "Joyce pinched lots of things, by the way, so I think it's legit."