This book is not for the faint of heart. It is overwhelming in terms of plot, imagery, and its large cast of characters. However, it is completely worth it and it flows beautifully once you get in tune with the book. I bought the Satanic Verses when I was 17 and I was not ready for it--I read 15 pages and then put it away. I picked it up again 7 years later and could not put it down.

There is just....so much packed into this book. One would have to read it many many times to get the full meaning of it, but at the same time it is a highly enjoyable and pleasurable read. By combining the two, this book becomes perfect--you can enjoy it on first read, but you will want to read it again, and again. Rushdie is the consummate storyteller. Like Neil Gaiman, he is amazing at the actual "telling" of the story, as opposed to just having interesting characters and plots (although he does). He is a storyteller in the tradition of the old tellers, the bards and minstrels and trovadores of a bygone age. Rushdie keeps it alive.

However, a warning. There is a reason that Rushdie had a fatwa declared against him. This book does not portray the Prophet Mohammed in the best light. At all. That is something people may find offensive. I found it fascinating in terms of exploring the genesis of a religion. Rushdie keeps your guessing--in the end, you have to decide what you believe about the characters, including Mohammed.

Pretty sure this is part of the rarefied pantheon of books joining the likes of Infinite Jest and A Brief History of Time as one of the most bought, least finished books of all time. It starts out strong with an almost singsong, Indian lilt and cadence as Gibreel and Saladin hurtle to earth - interestingly nonplussed by the whole affair. But then its dream sequences and odd digressions left me scratching my head - I just couldn't get my footing.

Rushdie clearly is an accomplished writer. Open the book to any page and the writing often dazzles and he's working here, juggling ideas and poking at concepts. Maybe it's my own expectations coming into the book - wondering what could be so damning as to warrant a fatwa against his life. But it never really gelled and for all the furor it engendered all it managed to elicit from me was mild indifference. If it wasn't part of a book club read I doubt if I would have finished it.

For all it's hype, I was pretty disappointed with this book. Pretty is an understatement actually. This experience reminded me of my attempted reading of Thomas Pynchon's "V." I have come to the conclusion that idiosyncratic wording and arrangements are a turn off, and that's exactly what I found in the "Satanic Verses." The book itself is also confusing because there's two or three story lines intertwined with each other. What you basically have is a story about two Indian born characters, one an expatriate and the other a famous Indian Cinema star. Over the course of the book we follow the mis-adventures of the two as they progress through a series of odd dream like transformations after the bombing a plane they were traveling in.

These story lines use allusions regarding an apocryphal legend (history?) regarding a series of verses supposedly recited by the Muslim prophet Muhammad. These verses were said to have been recited in order to gain the support of locals who were still hesitant to submit to Allah. By reciting these verses, which espoused three goddesses these villagers worshiped, the hope was that the Muslims could win the support of the locals and secure new converts. Of course, being that such reverence for other deities are counter to the beliefs of Muslims, these recitations are considered blasphemous. In the end Muhammad retracts these verses after it was decided that Satan had led him astray. These events are thinly disguised in the book by replacing the names of historical figures and places...Mecca is renamed Jahilia and the prophet is renamed Mahound...interestingly enough Jahilia and Mahound are considered pejoratives towards Muslims. These names signify the author's thinly disguised irreverence or disdain for Islam. I found myself not overly impressed because this was looking more and more like a polemic.

Gibreel, the Indian actor, is transformed into an angel, seemingly representing his ethereal nature, and aloof existence. He never openly renounces his Indian heritage as does Saladin, the Indian expatriate. Therefor he is portrayed as a cloven hoofed beast. Eventually they return to their normal states, but why and how is never discernible to me. Throw in an uninteresting love triangle(s) and another storyline involving a butterfly clad prophetess and you're left with a slightly over indulgent novel. I can only surmise that these were merely dreams by Gibreel in his increasingly deteriorating mental state, which is hinted at.

I'm still left wondering how these story lines connect to one another...and perhaps that's why it took me over two months to get through this book. I felt compelled to finish it only out of a desire to finish what I started, and relief came when I was done. Not exactly a good sign.

I was expecting it to be harsh and dry, but to my surprise it's quite the opposite. It's not really an attack on Islam as it's widely thought (although some fragments of it could result offensive for very devout muslims); it's more a novel about human nature, about love, hate, forgiveness, evil, good, identity, etc. I found it to be a very enjoyable book full of fantastic events which left me thinking upon finishing my reading.

“What kind of idea are you? Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accomodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive; or are you the cussed, bloody-minded, ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze? – The kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of hundred, be smashed to bits; but, the hundredth time, will change the world.”

Wow - my head wants to explode. Rushdie is one of a kind!

This is the third Rushdie book that I have read and he has a way of making me feel not smart enough to really get his books so I have a hard time rating them.

This one has been on and off my reading radar for at least 25 years. I remember all the controversy surrounding it when it came out and the fatwa that was placed on the author. I found I was more interested in the circumstances and the author than I was the actual book so I never read it.

Picking it up now I expected it to be somewhat dated (it's not). From what I remember the fatwa was placed on the author because he suggested that because Mohammed was illiterate and had the Qu'ran read to him by the Archangel Gabriel he could have fallen asleep at some point and Satan could have jumped in and impersonated Gabriel thus writing some of the verses in the Holy Book (Satanic Verses). So, I expected the book to be about this. This is not the main story of the book it's only a dream sequence of a character who fell from the sky from a blown up airplane (yep you read that right). The main part of the story is really about India and the race relations with England. I don't know a lot of history of this (hence the not smart enough comment earlier). What I found interesting, for lack of a better word, is that these same race issues are still happening. That's a bit disturbing considering this book was first published in 1988.

While I didn't enjoy this one as much as Midnight's Children or the Ground Beneath Her Feet, I did like it and think that it is (still) an important book to read.

هب ان كاتباٌ ما قرر أن يؤلف رواية طبقاٌ لفكرة تيار الوعي وكان بطلها الرئيسي هتلر وقام فيها بإظهار هتلر علي أنه حاكم عادل وانه شخصية عظيمة قامت من اجل بلادها بكل شئ وتفاني فى خدمته وأنكر فيها قيامه بابادة اليهود والغجر وانكر سعيه لسيادة العرق الأري وجعل الكاتب الفكرة النازية فكرة نزيهة وتستحق ان تسود العالم

هل كان سيلقي الكاتب دفاعاٌ من منظمات حقوق الانسان وهل كان سيحظي بحقوق اللجوء السياسي والحماية ممن سيسعون للبطش به انذاك ؟
وهل ستقبل قيم الحضارة الاوروربية وحرية التعبير هذا ؟

هذا التساؤل المشروع هو رد علي كل ما يمكن أن يدافع به شخصاٌ من مدعي الليبرالية والحرية فى التعبير
مع طبعاٌ الفارق الكبير بين ديكتاتور نازي دموي مثل هتلر والنبي صلي الله عليه وسلم نبي الهداية والرحمة الذي بعث رحمة للعالمين

A near perfect novel. I loved the writing. I loved the characters. I loved how Rushdie was able to master heaven and hell, saint and sinner, heaven and earth in this dreamlike exploration of what it means to be an immigrant, an angel, a saint and a sinner. At times he writes like a post-modern satirist cum Pynchon, then suddenly he melts into his best post-colonial Achebe, and then off again on his magical realist, literary carpet à la Gabriel García Márquez. Rushdie's writing is a mountain you don't climb down, you fly off.

I'm giving this four stars because I acknowledge the importance of what this book has to say. The importance does not outweigh the fact that Rushdie does the "oh look how badly they treat women they must be bad!" dance while amassing almost a dozen girlfriends in the refrigerator and a couple personas whose bad ass character definition is completely subsumed by their (male) lover's plot lines, but stands alongside it, equally worthy of mention. It's a balancing of my importance as a self with my importance as an idea, something that men the world over could learn something from. Intersectionality does not dampen your critical thinking skills; solipsism does. And when it comes to gynephobia or any other ideological oppression, solipsism kills.

n  Mahound, any new idea is asked two questions. When it's weak: will it compromise? We know the answer to that one. And now, Mahound, on your return to Jahilia, time for the second question: How do you behave when you win? When your enemies are at your mercy and your power has become absolute: what then?n

The main reason why I think this book deserves to be read is because while Rushdie does fall into authorial/political traps in regards to women, he does so while deconstructing the very power structures that propagate those traps. It's not a matter of "I did my best and no one should criticize me" feel-good stagnancy, nor a philosophical degeneration into nonentity that likes to pretend privilege is not a thing, but a real look at the compromises we live by in the societal boundaries of good and evil. This angry and messy view of things is particular important when considering the book, its history, and the particular reader I am, an atheist woman who grew to adulthood in the wake of 9/11. I have my own issues due to my identity, but I'll never be thought a terrorist.

n  Emboldened by the lights and the patient, silent lens, he goes further. These kids don't know how lucky they are, he suggests. They should consult their kith and kin. Africa, Asia, the Caribbean: now those are places with real problems. Those are places where people might have grievances worth respecting. Things aren't so bad here, not by a long chalk; no slaughters here, no torture, no military coups. People should value what they've got before they lose it. Ours always was a peaceful land, he says. Our industrious island race.n

I know people died for the sake of this book, I know people died for the sake of my country's obsessions with security and military industrial complex as a direct result of Islamophobia, and I know how easy it would be to use one to excuse the other. It's the same parsed feeling when Rushdie writes about current events in Ferguson twenty-six years before in fiction form, and then goes on to comment how the martyr of his particular story had a history of abusing women that does not receive coverage for the sake of solidarity. What's important here is how little confidence there is in regards to the "right" answer to all this, how Rushdie handles the choice between in such a way that the good and the bad of each are readily apparent and always in metamorphosis. Much like Murakami, I found myself questioning my own beliefs not because of how characters I had identified with had suffered, but due to the genuine interest the author had in questioning the lines of good and evil and what that all meant for our effort to live. Both of them have issues with writing female characters, but the "worth reading" quality is high enough to merit a pass.

n  Allie had a way of switching from the concrete to the abstract, a trope so casually achieved as to leave the listener half-wondering if she knew the difference between the two; or, very often, unsure as to whether, finally, such a difference could be said to exist.n

If I can do it, so can you. Personal offence does not impress me when lives are on the line, and that goes for any and all lives.

I'd never had any interest in reading this book.

But I have now bought a copy.



It's back at the top of the best seller lists. Murderous thugs who try to supress books, get exactly the opposite of what they want.

AND VERY nearly 3 months after starting ... I have finished! This is a long book, but more importantly it's a very complicated, densely written book, one that meanders through many different tales and points of view and places and two rather distinct main time periods, along with the backstories of many of the characters who get wrapped up in the story of the two main protagonists.

This is an example of the sort of dense literary prose we see page after page:

"It all boiled down to love, reflected Saladin Chamcha in his den: love, the refractory bird of Meilhac and Halévy's libretto for Carmen -- one of the prize specimens, this, in the Allegorical Aviary he'd assembled in lighter days, and which included among its winged metaphors the Sweet (of youth), the Yellow (more lucky than me), Khayyám-- FitzGerald's adjectiveless Bird of Time (which has but a little way to fly, and lo! is on the Wing), and the Obscene; this last from a letter written by Henry James, Sr, to his sons. . . "Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters."

And this, some of the quality of observation - here a character contemplates a topic that many authors have had a crack at, the "we are legion" concept:

“O, the dissociations of which the human mind is capable, marvelled Saladin gloomily. O, the conflicting selves jostling and joggling within these bags of skin. No wonder we are unable to remain focused on anything for very long; no wonder we invent remote-control channel-hopping devices. If we turned these instruments upon ourselves we’d discover more channels than a cable or satellite mogul ever dreamed of.”

So, in this rambling exploration that maintains from the start a significant element of the absurdist/surreal whilst offering very real looks at a wide variety of lives, Rushdie continually blurs the lines between dreams, delusions, and reality. It's never clear what can be believed - we know the whole thing is fiction, but the fictions within that framework are shifting and won't be pinned down.

The author covers a great many themes that are all woven together into a loose garment that will probably fit any theory you happen to have. We're presented with issues of religion (mainly Hindu and Muslim) of identity (mainly Indian and British) of diasporas, integration, intolerance, tolerance, faith, friendship, relationships, family... it goes on.

The book is of course famous for the wrath it provoked among some muslims. Certainly the narrative is uncompromising, sometimes mocking, sometimes vicious, mercilessly following any seam of weakness. I'm not sufficiently educated in the history of the muslim faith to comment with even a crumb of authority. But certainly the christian faith emerged from a muddy historical process with inconveniences pared away to present a cleaner more organised statement to the future. Rushdie implies something similar for the muslim faith. I can see why it could be painful reading for the devout.

This of course, does not justify a violent response.

I can't summarise the book well. It's too large and sprawling for that.

It starts with two men falling from an exploding aircraft and improbably (impossibly) surviving. We follow the pair on their journey from there, with flashbacks, dreams, histories, as their new lives spiral around each other, some how opposites, somehow each a mirror of the other.

What is the book ABOUT? What was the main message the author tried to impart? I don't know.

For most of the book I was engaged almost entirely through intellectual curiosity and morbid fascination. I didn't particularly like the characters, I wasn't emotionally bound to them. It's not that kind of book.

But towards the end the reunion of one character with a dying parent did hit me hard, and proved that if Rushdie wants to pull on your emotional strings, he knows how to do it.

I'm glad I read the book. I won't be plunging into another of Rushdie's works any time soon. I just don't have the reading time/energy - my next read will be an SFF romp of some kind where my brain can relax and I can be entertained.

Give the book a shot. I hope the renewed interest is some comfort to Mr Rushdie as he recovers from the recent terrorist attack on him.







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"When you've fallen from the sky, been abandoned by your friend, suffered police brutality, metamorphosed into a goat, lost your work as well as your wife, learned the power of hatred and regained the human shape, what is there left to do except demand your rights?"

So this is one of the many cadences found in Mr Rushdie's indictment of religion, movies, relationships, and of conflicts of the human condition that is at once uproariously funny, yet tinged with pain and great sadness.

Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha, the two actors and central characters that fall off a plane on a fateful day hijacked by terrorists and live to weave in and out of each other's lives is a frenetic novel of voices, ideas, and magical realism.