Joseph Anton Rushdie, Salman

In 1989, Rushdie received a telephone call from a journalist who told the author that he had been "sentenced to death" by the Ayatollah Khomeini. 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.

From the Publisher:
On February 14, 1989, Valentine's Day, Salman Rushdie received a telephone call from a BBC journalist who told the author that he had been ?sentenced to death? by the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the first time Rushdie 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. Rushdie was asked to choose an alias that the police could call him by. He thought of writers he loved and various combinations of their names. Then it came to him: Conrad and Chekhov?Joseph Anton.

How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than 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, and how does he learn to fight back? In this remarkable memoir, Rushdie tells that story for the first time; the story of the crucial battle for freedom of speech. He shares the sometimes grim, sometimes comic realities of living with armed policemen, and 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.

Compelling, provocative, and moving, Joseph Anton is a book of exceptional frankness, honesty, and 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.

Author Bio

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie was born into a wealthy Indian family two months before India gained its independence. His father was educated at Cambridge and, after practicing law, took over the family business of leather and cloth manufacturing. Rushdie has a degree in history, also from Cambridge. He lived in Pakistan after graduation, where his family had moved, but his involvement with a production of Edward Albee's THE ZOO STORY (a play disapproved of by the Muslim government) forced him to return to England. He worked as an actor, then as an advertising copywriter. His first novel was a failure, but his second, MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN, won the Booker Prize in 1993 and led to his success. His fourth novel, THE SATANIC VERSES (1988), was banned in India, Pakistan, South Africa, and the Arab states, and in 1989 the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran proclaimed a fatwa against Rushdie, calling for his death and offering a $2.6 million award for his execution. Rushdie went into hiding under protection from Scotland Yard, and remained largely in seclusion until September 1998, when the fatwa was lifted by a more liberal Iranian regime. Even in hiding, Rushdie continued to write, publishing another novel, a collection of stories, and many essays. In 1994 he was elected president of the newly formed International Parliament of Writers.

Product Attributes

Book Format:		Hardcover
Number of Pages:		0636
Publisher:		Random House

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Joseph Anton A Memoir (Hardcover)

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