A searing and characteristically eloquent account from the author of Midnight's Children of the years he was forced to spend in hiding following the fatwa the Ayatollah Khomeini issued after the publication of The Satanic Verses.
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
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099563440
Number of pages: 656
Weight: 453 g
Dimensions: 198 x 130 x 40 mm
Joseph Anton is a splendid book, the finest new memoir to cross my desk in many a year - Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post
Funny, painfully moving and absolutely necessary to read - Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph
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, Times
Frank and…more gripping than any spy story…the prose makes for powerful reading... He is a great writer who has been brave. - Margaret Drabble, Observer
An intimate tale of fathers and sons, of the beginnings and ends of marriages, of friendships and betrayals. At the same time, Joseph Anton is a large-scale spectacle of political and cultural conflicts. - New York Times Book Review
This is tense thriller even if we know the outcome - Fiona Wilson, The Times
Absorbing… Rushdie is compelling here - Robert Collins, Sunday Times (Culture)
Describes the painful process by which a human being becomes a symbol - Sunday Telegraph (Seven)
Sprawling, intimate, surreal, it exerts a mesmeric hold - Boyd Tonkin, Independent
Poignant and honest - Big Issue in the North
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