Joseph Anton

Joseph Anton

A Memoir

Summary

From the author of The Satanic Verses and Midnight's Children comes an unflinchingly honest and fiercely funny account of a life turned upside-down.

On Valentine's Day, 1989, Salman Rushdie received a telephone call from a BBC journalist that would change his life forever: Ayatollah Khomeini, a leading Muslim scholar, had issued him with a fatwa. This is his own account of how he was forced to live in hiding for over a decade; at once intimate and explosive, this is the personal tale behind the international story.

In Joseph Anton, Rushdie tells the remarkable story of one of the crucial battles, in our time, for freedom of speech.

Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Biography Prize

Reviews

  • Joseph Anton is a splendid book, the finest new memoir to cross my desk in many a year
    Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post

About the author

Salman Rushdie

Salman Rushdie is the author of fourteen previous novels, including Midnight's Children (for which he won the Booker Prize and the Best of the Booker), The Satanic Verses, and Quichotte (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize). A former president of PEN American Center, Rushdie was knighted in 2007 for services to literature and was made a Companion of Honour in the Queen's last Birthday Honours list in 2022.
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