The complex and multilayered plot focuses on two protagonists, both Indian Muslims living in England. Gibreel Farishta is a successful film actor who has suffered a recent bout of mental illness and who is in love with an English mountain climber, Alleluia Cone. Saladin Chamcha is a voice actor who has had a falling out with his father. Gibreel and Saladin meet on a flight from Bombay (Mumbai) to London, and the plane is hijacked by Sikh terrorists. During an argument the terrorists accidentally detonate a bomb, destroying the aircraft over the English Channel. The book opens with Gibreel and Saladin, the sole survivors, falling into the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the most controversial and acclaimed novels ever written, The Satanic Verses is Salman Rushdie’s best-known and most galvanizing book. Set in a modern world filled with both mayhem and miracles, the story begins with a bang: the terrorist bombing of a London-bound jet in midflight. Two Indian actors of opposing sensibilities fall to earth, transformed into living symbols of what is angelic and evil. This is just the initial act in a magnificent odyssey that seamlessly merges the actual with the imagined. A book whose importance is eclipsed only by its quality, The Satanic Verses is a key work of our times.