Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jetliner explodes above the English Channel. Through the falling debris, two men-Gibreel Farishta, the biggest movie star in India, and Saladin Chamcha, an expatriate returning from his first visit to Bombay in fifteen years-plummet from the sky. Washing up on the snow-covered sands of an English beach, they proceed through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations.