Joseph Anton, English edition

Prologue
 
The First Blackbird
 
AFTERWARDS, WHEN THE WORLD WAS EXPLODING AROUND HIM AND THE lethal blackbirds were massing on the climbing frame in the school playground, he felt annoyed with himself for forgetting the name of the BBC reporter, a woman, who had told him that his old life was over and a new, darker existence was about to begin. She had called him at home on his private line without explaining how she got the number. How does it feel, she asked him, to know that you have just been sentenced to death by the Ayatollah Khomeini? It was a sunny Tuesday in London but the question shut out the light. This is what he said, without really knowing what he was saying: It doesn t feel good. This is what he thought: I m a dead man. He wondered how many days he had left to live and thought the answer was probably a single-digit number. He put down the telephone and ran down the stairs from his workroom at the top of the narrow Islington row house where he lived. The living room windows had wooden shutters and, absurdly, he closed and barred them. Then he locked the front door.
 
It was Valentine s Day but he hadn t been getting on with his wife, the American novelist Marianne Wiggins. Six days earlier she had told him she was unhappy in the marriage, that she didn t feel good around him anymore, even though they had been married for little more than a year, and he, too, already knew it had been a mistake. Now she was staring at him as he moved nervously around the house, drawing curtains, checking window bolts, his body galvanized by the news as if an electric current were passing through it, and he had to explain to her what was happening. She reacted well, beginning to discuss what they should do next. She used the word we. That was courageous.
 
A car arrived at the house, sent by CBS television. He had an appointment at the American network s studios in Bowater House, Knightsbridge, to appear live, by satellite link, on its

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), Shame, The Satanic Verses, The Moor s Last Sigh, and Quichotte, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize; a collection of stories, East, West; a memoir, Joseph Anton; a work of reportage, The Jaguar Smile; and three collections of essays, most recently Languages of Truth. His many awards include the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, which he won twice; the PEN/Allen Foundation Literary Service Award; the National Arts Award; the French Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; the European Union s Aristeion Prize for Literature; the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature; and the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a former president of PEN America. His books have been translated into over forty languages.

A splendid book, the finest . . . memoir to cross my desk in many a year. Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
 
Action-packed . . . in a literary class by itself . . . Like Isherwood, Rushdie s eye is a camera lens firmly placed in one perspective and never out of focus. Instead it is the world that it photographs a world temporarily gone mad that shifts, blurs, sharpens and changes with a dizzying swiftness. Los Angeles Review of Books
 
Extraordinary . . . Joseph Anton beautifully modulates between [moments] of accidental hilarity, and the higher purpose Rushdie saw in opposing at all costs any curtailment on a writer s freedom to say what he or she wants. The Boston Globe

A gripping, firsthand account of an important battle for artistic freedom. Los Angeles Times

Compelling, affecting . . . demonstrates Mr. Rushdie s ability as a stylist and storyteller. . . . [He] reacted with great bravery and even heroism. The Wall Street Journal

Gripping, moving and entertaining . . . nothing like it has ever been written. The Independent (UK)

A thriller, an epic, a political essay, a love story, an ode to liberty. Le Point (France)

Unflinchingly honest . . . an engrossing, exciting, revealing and often shocking book. de Volkskrant (The Netherlands)

One of the best memoirs you may ever read. DNA (India)