I found The Satanic Verses to be fairly difficult to understand, except on a very high level. I enjoyed the novel, particularly for Rushdie's clever turns of phrase (one example being the extended introduction of a woman mountain climber named Cone, who is ultimately referred to in a later punchline as "Ice Queen Cone", which I thought was awfully cute). His wordplay reminds me somewhat of Humbert's monologue in Nabokov's Lolita.