On 14 february 1989, valentines day, salman rushdie was telephoned by a bbc journalist and told that he had been sentenced to death by the ayatollah khomeini for the first time he heard the word fatwa his crime? to have written a novel called the satanic verses, which was accused of being against islam, the prophet and the quran so begins the extraordinary story of how a writer was forced underground, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team he was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by he thought of writers he loved and combinations of their names; then it came to conrad and chekhov - joseph anton how do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for over nine years? how does he go on working? how does he fall in and out of love? how does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and why does he stumble, how does he learn to fight back? in this remarkable memoir rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech he talks about the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom it is a book of exceptional frankness and honesty, compelling, provocative, moving, and of vital importance because what happened to salman rushdie was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding somewhere in the world every day
Sir SALMAN RUSHDIE is the multi-award winning author of eleven previous novels--Luka and the Fire of Life, Grimus, Midnight's Children (which won the Booker Prize, 1981, and the Best of the Booker Prize, 2008), Shame,The Satanic Verses, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor's Last Sigh, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Fury, Shalimar the Clown and The Enchantress of Florence--and one collection of short stories, East, West. He has also published three works of non-fiction: The Jaguar Smile, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 and Step Across This Line, and coedited two anthologies, Mirrorwork and Best American Short Stories 2008. His memoir, Joseph Anton, published in 2012, became an internationally acclaimed bestseller. It was praised as "the finest memoir...in many a year" (The Washington Post). His books have been translated into over forty languages. He is a former president of American PEN.
