The Satanic Verses

Two Indian actors survive the mid-air explosion of a hijacked jet, fall onto an English beach transformed into angel and devil, and are pulled through Thatcher-era London and its immigrant East End as their fortunes and identities come apart.

Saladin Chamcha

The beach where they fall, Rosa Diamond's house

Part 1

Saladin and Gibreel drop out of the exploded jet and wash up alive on a snow-covered English beach, taken in by the ancient, memory-haunted Rosa Diamond. Here the transformation shows itself: Gibreel keeps a saintly glow while Saladin sprouts horns and hooves, and the police who arrive treat the devil-shaped brown man as the obvious criminal.

Part 1, ch. 3-4

inspired by The novel names an English coast near Hastings but not an exact point. Anchored to Pevensey Bay in East Sussex, the low shingle shore beside Hastings where the old Norman landing took place, as the real-world model for the beach and Rosa Diamond's house; the specific house is fictional.

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