A review by inspiralling
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie. Read for the r/fantasy bingo challenge - 'Published in the 80s', hard mode: by an author of colour. Plus, when there's a fatwa about a book, that just makes it more interesting. Nobody had coined the term 'Streisand effect' yet, though; there was no way Ayatollah Khomeini could have known.

This novel is a giddy spiral between different levels of reality, saturated in allusion and purposefully ambiguous. The writing is often beautiful but sometimes overwrought. The most accessible sections, sadly for Rushdie, are the dream-narratives regarding Mahound's conquest of Jahilia and Ayesha's butterfly pilgrimage; these were also my favourite sections, but might just be because I'm basic and they were easier to follow. For the most part, the narrative follows two actors named Gibreel and Saladin, who met while held hostage by terrorists on a hijacked plane and should have separated when the plane was blown up at thirty thousand feet. Instead, through the power of magical realism, they landed safely in the English Channel and washed up on the shore of the UK. Both Gibreel and Saladin are Indian but inexorably drawn to the UK - Gibreel chasing a yehudah woman named, anviliciously, Alleluia, and Saladin fleeing the filth and vulgarity of India for true civilisation. (That, at least, is how he sees it.) Is this difference in motivation the reason why Gibreel starts transforming into an archangel, while Saladin grows horns and cloven hooves? He rejects India, as Lucifer rejected heaven? While Saladin is imprisoned in a hospital for mythologically-afflicted immigrants, Gibreel has invasive dreams in which, in archangel mode, he's dragged across time and space and compelled to provide the desired answers by humans of forceful personality. Prophets, in other words. (But in that sense, when 'Mahound' makes Gibreel provide the answer he wants about al-Lat, Manat and al-Uzza, does that make 'Mahound' his own Satan?) Both characters' growing nonhuman characteristics are confusing to them and largely significant for how they cause others to treat them - fawning adulation for Gibreel, mockery for Saladin. It's not clear either really deserves the role they're given over the other; deep down, they're both assholes.

I'll admit to liking Salad over Gibreel, though. What can I say, sympathy for the <s>devil</s> underdog. I also think he's a better-drawn character, though, and has more agency and drive, while Gibreel is largely the puppet of God/Satan/Rushdie. That made it difficult to decide whether the book was plot- or character-driven for the multiple choice - can I say it's plot-driven for Gibreel and character-driven for Saladin?