A novel that begins when two Indian men, an actor and a voice artist, fall from a hijacked airliner over the English Channel and survive. Their transformed lives play out in modern London, while a series of dreamlike episodes explore faith, doubt and the origins of a new religion. The book deals with migration, identity, belief and the clash between old worlds and new ones, in a rich and comic style. Its treatment of religious themes caused intense controversy and protest around the world, and it remains one of the most debated novels of the twentieth century.
Quotes
To be born again," sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, "first you have to die.
Martyrdom is a privilege," she said softly. "We shall be like stars; like the sun.
No, not death: birth.
The history of life was not the bumbling progress – the very English, middle-class progress – Victorian thought had wanted it to be, but violent, a thing of dramatic, cumulative transformations: in the old formulation, more revolution than evolution.