The Satanic Verses a reflection of the author’s dilemmas." The work is an "albeit surreal, record of its own author's continuing identity crisis." Ally said that the book reveals the author ultimately as "the victim of nineteenth-century British colonialism." Rushdie himself spoke confirming this interpretation of his book, saying that it was not about Islam, "but about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay." He has also said "It's a novel which happened to contain a castigation of Western materialism. The tone is comic." After the "Satanic Verses" controversy developed, some scholars familiar with the book and the whole of Rushdie's
Salman Rushdie Zia-ul-Haq. "Shame" won France's "Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger" (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook that Rushdie is very conscious of as a member of the Kashmiri diaspora. Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in 1987 called "The Jaguar Smile". This book has a political focus and is based on his first-hand experiences and research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments. His most controversial work, "The Satanic Verses", was published in 1988 (see section