Joseph Anton

Rushdie, Salman

3.63

8,953 ratings by Goodreads

ISBN 10: 0449807819 ISBN 13: 9780449807811

Publisher: Random House, 2012

On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s 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 wordfatwa. 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 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, 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.

Includes a prologue read by the Author.

Praise for Salman Rushdie

“In Salman Rushdie . . . India has produced a glittering novelist—one with startling imaginative and intellectual resources, a master of perpetual storytelling.”—The New Yorker

“Salman Rushdie has earned the right to be called one of our great storytellers.”—The Observer

“Our most exhilaratingly inventive prose stylist, a writer of breathtaking originality.”—Financial Timese prose stylist, a writer of breathtaking originality.”—Financial Times

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Review:

"Joseph Anton is a book that makes you laugh. It makes you sympathise. It may even scare you. It should also make you ― if you believe that freedom is essential ― very, very angry." (David Aaronovitch The Times)

"[I]t may be the most important book of our times – comparable, in a sense, to Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man." (Rod Liddle Spectator)

"Joseph Anton demonstrates Mr. Rushdie's ability as a stylist and storyteller... Defenders of Enlightenment values, regardless of what they think of Mr. Rushdie the novelist, must acknowledge the fact that, when threatened, Salman Rushdie―Joseph Anton―reacted with great bravery and even heroism." (Michael C Moynihan Wall Street Journal)

"Funny, painfully moving and absolutely necessary to read." (Nicholas Shakespeare Daily Telegraph)

"Started Joseph Anton last night and got annoyed that I eventually had to interrupt it by sleeping. Reads like a thriller... going back in..." (Dylan Jones (Editor, GQ) Twitter)

Book Description:

A compelling and frank account of one of the most extraordinary stories in recent literary history - Salman Rushdie and the fatwa.

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