The theme of The Satanic Verses is migration, emigration, and the loss of faith it often brings about in the emigrant/immigrant. Faith, its loss, and the relation of faith to the secular life, the hole — the “God shaped hole” — at the centre of the once-faithful person, is the issue that, Rushdie has admitted, underpins the book.

I don't take drugs as an escape trick, like some cheap magician on a cruise ship. I take drugs to find gold, like a greedy prospector in the backcountry. There are those who take drugs to be cool and those who take drugs to expand. I am not James Dean. I'm a balloon. And god has a mouth on my hole. And is blowing. And filling me up. And filling me up. One day I will explode. And then I will be free.