Joseph Anton

a memoir

636 pages

English language

Published April 9, 2012 by Random House.

ISBN:
9780812992786
OCLC Number:
777657563

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On February 14, 1989, Salman Rushdie received a call from a journalist informing him that he had been "sentenced to death" by the Ayatollah Khomeini. It was the first time Rushdie heard the word fatwa. His crime? Writing a novel, 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 for more than nine years, moving from house to house, with the constant presence of an armed police protection team. Asked to choose an alias that the police could use, he thought of combinations of the names of writers he loved: 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 despair shape his thoughts and actions, and how does he learn to …

12 editions

Subjects

  • Indic Authors
  • Censorship
  • Fatwas
  • Biography
  • English Authors
  • Freedom of the press
  • Islam and literature
  • Personal narratives
  • History
  • Protective custody
  • Blasphemy (Islam)

Places

  • Great Britain