And neither have I ever read "The Satanic Verses" - although I keep a copy in my library - but I'm not the one judging it nor, worse still, burning it like in some symbolic book-burning of the Middle Ages or the more recent Nazi time.
The book was published in September 1988. 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 to go underground for more than nine years, and in the first few months following the fatwa moving from house to house 56 times, once every three days, while under constant armed police protection.
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 fight back?
In his memoir "Joseph Anton", Rushdie tells for the first time the story of his 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.
What has been happened to Salman Rushdie since 1988 was the first act of a drama that is still unfolding. To wit, on 12 August 2022 Rushdie was stabbed in the neck and abdomen when he was set to give a lecture in Chautauqua, New York. Commenting on the extent of his injuries, Rushdie's agent said that he had likely lost an eye, in addition to sustaining liver damage and severed nerves in one arm. Rushdie was placed on a ventilator the day of the attack, but within 48 hours, he was taken off of it and reportedly able to speak. Two days after Rushdie's stabbing, the government-run newspaper of Iran called the attack an "implementation of divine decree".
As I wrote, I haven't yet and may never read "The Satanic Verses", but I've started to read his memoir "Joseph Anton", Rushdie's unflinchingly honest and fiercely funny account of a life turned upside-down.
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I shall not cease from mental strife nor shall my pen sleep in my hand till Rushdie has a right to life and books aren't burned or banned |
