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Joseph Anton: A Memoir

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Courage under siege, art against silencing

This is more than a celebrity memoir; it feels like being locked inside a writer’s mind while the world tries to erase him. Rushdie brings the absurdity, fear, loneliness, and stubborn humor of those years vividly to life. If you’re drawn to books about freedom, identity, and what it costs to keep speaking, this is a gripping, deeply human read.

  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize Nominee for Biography (2012)
  • Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Nonfiction (2013)
  • Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Memoir & Autobiography (2012)
  • The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Nominee for Longlist (2012)
Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.
Just Arrived

Joseph Anton: A Memoir

Regular price $10.90
Unit price
per
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ISBN: 9780812992786
Authors: Salman Rushdie
Publisher: Random House
Date of Publication: 2012-01-01
Format: Hardcover
Goodreads rating: 3.65
(rated by 9378 readers)

Description

On February 14, 1989, Valentine’s Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and 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 and 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 and combinations of their names; then it came to Conrad and Chekhov—Joseph Anton. How do a writer and his family live with the threat of murder for more than nine years? How does he go on working? How does he fall in and out of love? How does despair shape his thoughts and actions, how and 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, and of the close bonds he formed with his protectors; of his struggle for support and understanding from governments, intelligence chiefs, publishers, journalists, and fellow writers; and of how he regained his freedom. It is a book of exceptional frankness and honesty, compelling, provocative, moving, and 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.
 

Courage under siege, art against silencing

This is more than a celebrity memoir; it feels like being locked inside a writer’s mind while the world tries to erase him. Rushdie brings the absurdity, fear, loneliness, and stubborn humor of those years vividly to life. If you’re drawn to books about freedom, identity, and what it costs to keep speaking, this is a gripping, deeply human read.

  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize Nominee for Biography (2012)
  • Andrew Carnegie Medal Nominee for Nonfiction (2013)
  • Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Memoir & Autobiography (2012)
  • The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction Nominee for Longlist (2012)
Note: While we do our best to ensure the accuracy of cover images, ISBNs may at times be reused for different editions of the same title which may hence appear as a different cover.