On 14 February 1989 Valentines Day Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist & told that he had been sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word fatwa. His crime? To have written a novel called The Satanic Verses which was accused of being against Islam the Prophet & 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 & combinations of their names; then it came to him: Conrad & Chekhov
- Joseph Anton". How do a writer & his family live with the threat of murder for over nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in & out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts & actions how & 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 & of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support & understanding from governments intelligence chiefs publishers journalists & fellow writers; & of how he regained his freedom. It is a book of exceptional frankness & honesty compelling provocative moving & 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."