Controversial Mumbai-born writer Salman Rushdie's life on the run when he was under death threats for his novel ‘The Satanic Verses’, is the subject of his new book scheduled to be released later this month.
The book, published by Jonathan Cape, will be released on 18 September, and a BBC documentary on his ordeal at the time will be telecast the next day, according to The Sunday Times.
In the book, New York-based Rushdie, 65, reportedly reveals how he stayed in 20 different 'safe houses' in Britain, and paid secret visits to friends such as writers Ian McEwan and Hanif Kureishi.
The book is titled ‘Joseph Anton’, the name Rushdie selected when asked by his police protectors for a pseudonym. He conjured his alias from two of his literary heroes, Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov, the report says.
In the forthcoming BBC documentary, Rushdie talks of “being 41 and thinking it pretty unlikely I would see my 42nd birthday. The police told me to lie low for a few days and let the politicians sort it out.”
The report adds that Rushdie's first weekend of the fatwa was spent locked inside a bedroom in the Lygon Arms hotel in Broadway, orcestershire. “One of the other guests,” he writes, “was a journalist from the Daily Mirror, who had taken a neighbouring room with a lady who was not his wife. “When the press had employed teams of snoops to find the author of 'The Satanic Verses', the journalist in the next room missed his scoop.”
{{/usCountry}}The report adds that Rushdie's first weekend of the fatwa was spent locked inside a bedroom in the Lygon Arms hotel in Broadway, orcestershire. “One of the other guests,” he writes, “was a journalist from the Daily Mirror, who had taken a neighbouring room with a lady who was not his wife. “When the press had employed teams of snoops to find the author of 'The Satanic Verses', the journalist in the next room missed his scoop.”
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