Jörg’s Reviews > The Satanic Verses > Status Update

Rushdie loves his cast. Secondary characters get in focus one at a time. Hind the scheming B&B host, Alleluia the ice queen. They serve more or less important causes in the advancement of the two main characters.
Sometimes really funny. After god appeared with storm clouds, Gibreel enjoys the subsequent good weather all the more. He fails his newly accepted role of god's sent missionary ludicrously.

Every second chapter is a dream sequence in which the Gibreel of "reality" becomes the archangel Gibreel. Reality Gibreel tries to avoid sleep due to these successive dreams haunting him.
In the second dream he first is called by an Imam in exile in London (probably Khomeini) to fight against Ayesha, an enemy of his. Then, he appears to Ayesha back when she was a poor orphan girl in muslim India/Pakistan.

After falling from the sky, Saladin physically turned into satan with sulfurous breath, horns and hoofs, got detained by immigration police, beaten up and ended in a ward with other mutants. Contrarily, Gibreel got a golden glow and charms everyone, lost his previously sulfurous breath and relives the 30s in Argentina with the widow who took him in. Not only in narration but in visions coming true through his navel.

While the first part covered the background of Gibreel and Saladin, the second part comes to the point and looks into Mohammed (Mahound) as a historical figure. He's described as a human with weaknesses, first receiving the Satanic Verses about three pre-islamic godesses of Mecca from the archangel Gibreel, soon replacing them with a monotheistic prerogative. Rushdie refers to alleged apocryphal Koran suras.

More readable than I thought. I abandoned this shortly after release after a few pages. Still, will be a tough read and I need to be concentrated due to Rushdie's colourful Indian-British prose mixed with colloquial Indian words as well as religious and cultural allusions. The Satanic Verses so far have been mentioned in a half-sentence which couldn't aggravate any thinking person.