Gibreel and Saladin have been chosen (by whom?) as protagonists in the eternal wrestling match between Good and Evil. So begins The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie's first novel for five years. Gibreel seems to have acquired a halo, while, to Saladin's dismay, his legs grow hairier, his feet turn into hoofs, and there are bumps burgeoning at his temples.

A miracle but an ambiguous one, because it soon becomes apparent that curious changes are coming over them. Clinging to each other, singing rival songs, they plunge downward, and are finally washed up, alive, on the snow-covered sands of an English beach. Through the debris of limbs, drinks trolleys, memories, blankets and oxygen masks, two figures fall towards the sea without benefit of parachutes: Gibreel Farishta, India's legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices, self-made self and Anglophile supreme. To will is to disagree not to submit to dissent.Just before dawn one winter's morning a hijacked jumbo-jet blows apart high above the English Channel. angels, they don't have much in the way of a will.

Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Angels are easily pacified turn them into instruments and they'll play your harpy tune. And hey presto, the end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, the salvationdamnation of man, all the usual etcetera. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills a la god. The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allahgod and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God's will one day they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: antiquestions. “Question: What is the opposite of faith?

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie