Soon afterwards the elderly Mahfouz, a Nobel prize winner, was stabbed in the neck he survived.Įven while safe in hiding, Rushdie still felt the sting of many knives in his back. In America, the blind sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman (later jailed for the first World Trade Center attack) complained that if Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz had been properly punished for his book Children of Gebelawi, then Rushdie would not have dared to publish The Satanic Verses. Some British Muslims actually tried to sue Rushdie for blasphemy and the judge received some threatening letters before duly throwing the case out of court.

“I assume the doors are locked?” he asked, hiding behind his newspaper. One day Rushdie and his driver were stuck in traffic outside the Regent’s Park Mosque as the faithful were pouring out of Friday afternoon prayers. Islamic rage and menace seemed uncontainable. Deeply offended that the Brits would dare protect the apostate, Iran severed diplomatic relations Britain retaliated in kind. Fortunately, Scotland Yard offered him and his family a series of safe houses as well as safe cars with drivers. Muslim citizens in London and Bradford held mass demonstrations, burned his novel and openly called for his death. There were real and tangible threats against Rushdie even in Great Britain. There are 200 journalists on the sidewalk waiting for you.” Thus began his life on the run. Soon afterwards, his wife called and said: “Don’t come back here. After riots in the streets left dozens dead, The Satanic Verses was banned in India then the great mullah issued the fatwa. Joseph Anton, a record of his life “on the lam,” takes its title from the pseudonym he used during that time in homage to writers Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov.Īn article in the Indian newspaper India Today “was the match that lit the fire,” Rushdie recalls. Having “vanished onto the front page,” as writer Martin Amis put it, he withstood 13 years in hiding, and eventually discovered how to reclaim his liberty. But six months after the novel appeared, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against him for his blasphemous insult “against Islam, the Prophet and the Qur’an.” Instantly he became a hunted fugitive - just the sort of nightmarish turn one might expect from a good film noir.Īs in a film noir, many of Rushdie’s friends deserted him and multitudes of people blamed him for being too free with his artistic expression. London-based writer Salman Rushdie was happy to sell his novel The Satanic Verses to Viking Penguin in February 1988. From the Canadian Jewish News, January 2013

Rushdie memoir